Banking Complaints in Morocco: Bank Al-Maghrib's Framework

What Bank Al-Maghrib publishes#

Bank Al-Maghrib publishes every year, in its banking supervision report (opens in a new tab), the number and nature of the complaints it receives. These complaints are only a fraction of those handled by banks: they come at the end of the journey, when the customer has not been satisfied or is seeking redress.

Three precautions when reading them:

• A rise in complaints is not necessarily a decline in service. It can also reflect greater awareness of how to complain or more accessible channels.
• The share of cases settled in the customer's favour depends on the nature of the cases as much as on how they are handled.
• Mediation has become the normal step between the bank and the supervisor. See banking mediation.

For a bank, the useful lesson is not the national total but the comparison with its own data: do its main complaint reasons follow the same trend, and how many of its customers go as far as the mediator or the regulator?

This page does not repeat the 2025 figures reported in the press: they will be added once read in Bank Al-Maghrib's report.

What Circular No. 10/W/16 requires#

Circular No. 10/W/16 of 10 June 2016 issued by the Governor (Wali) of Bank Al-Maghrib replaced Recommendation No. 1/G/2012. Approved by order of the Minister of Finance of 20 September 2016, it was published in the Official Bulletin on 14 September 2017. Its requirements, as described by the central bank and the press:

Its companion circular, No. 9/W/16 of the same date, sets the framework for the banking mediation scheme.

What banks and finance companies should do#

Meeting the deadlines is the minimum. A robust set-up goes further:

1. Log every complaint, including those resolved verbally in branches, so that the quarterly report reflects reality.
2. Align the internal taxonomy with the reporting headings (channel, subject, status, amount), while keeping enough detail for root cause analysis.
3. Track the escalation rate to the CMMB and to Bank Al-Maghrib as a risk indicator, presented to the committee.
4. Analyse the causes of the dominant reasons, in particular means of payment and account transactions, using the method described in our guide to fixing causes.
5. Connect complaints to the compliance and internal control framework: a well-founded, recurring complaint is often a compliance risk. See GRC in the financial sector.
6. Put safeguards around automation of triage or replies, so that a regulatory complaint is not misclassified: see AI and complaints.
7. Protect complainants' data, which often contains financial and personal information: see data protection in banking.

Compliance checklist#

• Central unit designated, written procedures and tracking tool in place.
• Systematic acknowledgement of receipt, whatever the channel.
• 10- and 40-working-day deadlines tracked case by case.
• Customers informed about mediation in replies and on customer materials.
• Quarterly report produced from the system, not from a manual count.
• Customer relations committee meeting twice a year, with cause analysis and an action plan.
• External escalation rate tracked and explained.