Each week, another regulatory issue makes the headlines — from Bank of America’s mishandling of unemployment payments during the pandemic to Goldman Sachs’ problem-ridden platform to service Apple Cards to the widespread pandemic-era fraud. At the root of understanding these issues is customer complaints, which tell financial institutions about the looming, fast-growing problems they need to know before they make the news.
If financial institutions looked at their customer complaints as a data source, they would be equipped to see the rising issues customers are telling them about, address practices and policies that are causing these issues; and prevent massive fines, unhappy customers, and bad media attention.
The good news is that with the PositivityTech® intelligent platform, financial institutions can proactively monitor their customer complaints and catch issues before they truly rear their ugly heads. Read on to see what this looks like:
Early warning signals can make all the difference
Following Bank of America’s $225 million fine for pandemic-related fraud, PositivityTech found that throughout 2020, Bank of America’s customers submitted complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about the issues regulators raised. While the volume, at that time, was still small, the “shape of the curve” was worth noting and tracking.
With PositivityTech’s proactive, ongoing systemic monitoring in place combined with “listening” to customers’ narratives, the outcome for Bank of America and its customers could have been very different.
The power of identifying improvements
Preventing fraud and scams are a number one focus for financial institutions, which is why MoneyGram found itself in hot water earlier this year. The CFPB fined the company for failing to deliver money to recipients and violating rules around remittance transfers.
Yet, while PositivityTech did reveal that complaints about fraud or scams were the number one issue for MoneyGram during the past decade, it also revealed that it has become less and less of an issue during the past year. As we shared,
“MoneyGram’s impressive reduction in complaints about fraud and scams for international money transfers showcases its leadership in this area. By sharing MoneyGram’s best practices with domestic (U.S.) money transfer providers, could the curve of increasing complaints be reversed faster — leading to a win for MoneyGram, the industry, and consumers?”
The media is turning to PositivityTech for the insights that banks need to know
As banks are slammed with regulatory concerns, financial journalists are reaching out to gain PositivityTech’s crucial findings, including:
A showdown is coming over who is liable for P2P payments fraud
With the CFPB’s forthcoming guidance on banks’ liabilities concerning digital payment fraud, American Banker turned to PositivityTech for customer complaint-related insights. PositivityTech shared the following:
What card issuers can learn from CFPB’s buy now/pay later inquiry
When the CFPB began looking into Buy Now Pay Later practices, PositivityTech found that complaints were still small, but that they were steadily increasing.
These findings foreshadowed the many issues that BNPL companies, still very much in their prime, would face only months later.
Truist reckons with customer backlash after integration snags
Following Truist’s recent technology integrations, customers took to the phone, their branches, and social media to voice their complaints. With customer complaint data, PositivityTech revealed how robust the issue really was.
How badly was Bread burned by its online credit card payment glitch?
Following Bread Financial’s recent outage, journalist Kate Fitzgerald turned to PositivityTech to see how customers were impacted. PositivityTech revealed Bread’s customer complaints during this critical time — and pointed to ongoing issues.
Do not ignore your customer complaints
In my experience, customer conversations are largely unused and ignored. Yet, they reveal so many opportunities for action. No financial institution has the luxury of leaving their customer complaints unexplored. With PositivityTech, you can find regulatory problems while they’re still bubbling at the surface — and you can stop them in their tracks. With insights come the ability to predict and prevent issues, and most importantly, keep your customers happy and grow your bottom line.
