The Bank of Spain has had to resort to an external private consultant to manage the avalanche of claims from bank customers for cards and mortgage loans that it has been enduring since 2020. Specifically, the supervisor has hired the services of Deloitte, an experienced consultant in this type of external support to the central bank in recent years.
According to the documentation provided by the body directed by Pablo Hernández de Cos to the Public Sector Contracting Platform, the contract has been awarded to Deloitte Legal because it considers that its offer, of 2.3 million euros, has been the ” more advantageous” compared to those presented by KPMG and EY, reducing the total initial budget of 2.8 million.
The object of the contract is “the provision of a support service for the management of claims referring to any type of incident related to loans or mortgage credits and cards”. “It is about contracting an instrumental activity, support, support and mere preparation of proposals, which is carried out following the instructions, and with review prior to signing by the competent body, of the Bank of Spain’s own staff”, clarifies the supervisor .
The tender is justified by the insufficient human resources available to process claims on time, which have been experiencing a “sustained and relevant” increase since 2020.
Indeed, the BdE’s Department of Entity Conduct, which is the competent body to carry out the work of attending to and resolving claims and queries that users of banking services may file, processed 34,330 customer claims in 2021, 60% more than in 2020, due to the rebound in those relating to mortgages, which shot up 94%, to 11,521, and the field of cards, which rose 80%, to 10,133.
For 2022, the supervisor foresees a new increase, up to a range of between 36,000 and 40,000 claims, which would include between 8,000 and 10,000 on mortgage loans and between 14,000 and 16,000 on cards. And for 2023 it manages a similar forecast, reaching between 44,000 and 52,000 files on the subject matter of the service for the initial period of the contract, which covers two years (from June 2023 to June 2025).
Deloitte will be in charge of developing this support service for the management of claims from next June and, from the expiration date, if necessary, the contract may be extended for periods of one year, up to a maximum of five years in total, as shown in the documents.
The estimated value of the contract exceeds 7.5 million euros for this maximum period of five years, with a base budget of 2.8 million for the initial period of two years and an additional budget for extensions of another 4.2 million euro.
Deloitte has been supporting the Bank of Spain in this task since the boom in claims experienced in 2020, to a large extent, due to the explosion that controversial revolving cards experienced in times of pandemic, which allow purchases or cash withdrawals to be automatically deferred.
By keeping the staff in charge of managing this type of complaint stable, the supervisory body has been forced to continue using external companies to guarantee a quality service to citizens, avoiding risks of non-compliance with legal processing deadlines.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
