The three bank employers (AEB, CECA and UNACC) have promised that their associates (banks, old savings banks and rural savings banksrespectively) perform a “diagnosis” of the current situation of their attention to the old people and those with disability and adopt “the as soon as possible and, at most, six month period” the measures of the sectoral plan to improve the service to these groups to ensure a “personalized, satisfactory attention and without unjustified delays”. This is how it appears in the document to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access and which the employers’ leaders will sign this Monday in the presence of the economic vice president, Nadia Calviñoand the Governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos.
This is the main novelty regarding the first and second draft prepared by the banking associations, also advanced by this newspaper. The ultimate plan (always subject to some last-minute retouching) makes the commitment of the entities more explicit and limits time. Along the same lines, it has also been added that the Financial Inclusion Observatory created by the employers will collect data from the banks to prepare a Semi-annual report monitoring of the measures, which will be made public and provided to the Ministry of Economy.
Enter the information that the entities will provide, as a minimum, the number of benefited customers by the measures of the plan, the number and characteristics of the Offices of each bank, the number of calls answeredthe number of tellers and adapted communication channels to the elderly, the number of customers and employees who have received training actions specific, and the number of broken ATMs and its repair time.
Measures
The aspect in which the entities, in dialogue with Economy, have made their commitment more concrete during the conversations of recent weeks has been that of attention in the offices. Thus, the banks have committed to, depending on their business model, adopt measures such as extend the schedule face-to-face care for cashier services to at least 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. (at the window or at the tellers with personalized assistance from a specific employee for those functions); give priority to the elderly in times of high influx in the offices; optimize management channels previous appointments; and specifically train branch staff on the needs of this group.
Refering to telephone servicehave also specified that the elderly or people with disabilities will be given a preferential care at no additional cost through a personal interlocutor and that the opening hours will be at least between 9am and 6pm for clients served without an office. As for the cashiersin addition to maintaining the commitment to adapt them to make them more accessible (as will also be done with apps and websites), it has been specified that when they are out of service will be repaired within a maximum period of two business days and the nearest alternative ATM will be informed so that customers can continue withdrawing money.
As already stated in the first documents, the entities have committed to communicate to your customers the measures they adopt from the menu included in the plan according to the most suitable or preferred channel for each user, such as communication on paper, webcasting, text messages (sms), or specific signage in offices. But in addition, in the final version of the document it has been added that said communication “will be presented in a clear, understandable and up-to-date way and its access must be simple”.
Done just in time
Related news
On January 20, Vice President Calviño urgently summoned those responsible for the three banking employers’ associations and gave them a term month to make a plan, was due this sunday. The events were precipitated as a result of the initiative of Carlos San Juan, a 78-year-old retired doctor, to collect signatures through the change.org platform to demand a “more human treatment” in the branches.
The employers’ plan is an extension of the ‘Strategic Protocol to Reinforce the Social and Sustainable Commitment of the Bank’ which they approved last summer. It’s about a catalog of measures that the entities will adopt according to their business model because setting a common commercial policy very strictly could go against competition law and be persecuted by the CNMC, in addition to the fact that each bank has a different percentage of older clients, so the plan must contain enough flexibility to adapt to the reality of each one.