The central bank’s financial inclusion report, reviewed today, indicates that the Supervisory Conduct Department of the banking regulator received 1,809 complaints in the second instance last year.
Of these, 1,213 (67%) were processed and closed within the same year, with 1,025 complaints (about 85%) resulting in a favorable outcome for financial consumers due to various irregularities committed by credit institutions and financial companies.
Besides issuing specific directives to the targeted institutions to correct the detected irregularities, the complaints resolved in favor of financial consumers led to the recovery and reimbursement of approximately 18 million meticais, which had been improperly charged to the complainants, according to the central bank’s report.
The number of complaints against Mozambican banks showed a continuing upward trend last year, increasing by 62% compared to 2023.
Mozambique is home to 15 commercial banks and 12 microbanks, as well as credit cooperatives and savings and credit organizations, among others.
The profits of Mozambican banks dropped by 21.9% in 2024, amounting to roughly 900 thousand euros per day, according to data from the Bank of Mozambique in the June financial stability report.
The central bank document explained that the decline in the banking sector’s net results, which totaled 24 billion meticais (319.4 million euros), was partly due to the “increase in operating costs, particularly personnel expenses, rising by 7.88%,” and also “the reduction in other operating results, reflecting a 44.60% increase in impairment losses.”
In 2023, the profits of Mozambican banks had increased by 8.12% compared to the previous year. It was noted in the document that in the 2024 results, 64.63%, equivalent to 16.82 billion meticais (223.8 million euros), were attributable to just three domestic credit institutions classified as systemic.
