Bank complaints are an essential tool for customers to dispute failures, delays or decisions of financial institutions. Therefore, the banks’ response time is an important element in protecting consumers and monitoring carried out by the supervisor.
The Bank of Portugal (BdP) clarified that banks must respond to all customer complaints within a maximum period of 15 working days, regardless of the channel used to lodge the complaint, according to .
The guidance is contained in a circular letter released by the supervisor, which updates the procedures to be followed by financial institutions when they receive complaints.
Changes for customers
Until now, the deadline was 15 working days when the complaint was presented in the complaints book, in physical or electronic format. However, when the complaint was sent directly to the BdP, the complaining institution had up to 20 working days to respond to the customer and forward the response to the supervisor. This difference now ceases to exist.
With the new rule, all complaints now have the same time limit. In practice, the customer no longer depends on the chosen channel to know how long the bank can take to respond, which makes the process simpler and more uniform.
Banks need to justify their response
In the response sent to the customer, banks must explain whether or not they consider there to have been a default. If they admit failures, they also need to indicate what measures were adopted to correct the situation.
After responding to the complainant, financial institutions are obliged to send the response sent to the BdP, as well as the necessary elements so that the regulator can assess the complaint. If the supervisor requests additional information, the bank will have to respond within a maximum of five business days, according to the source cited above.
Complaints continue to weigh on supervision
The most recent data shows that complaints continue to be a relevant tool for monitoring the relationship between banks and customers. In the 2025 Behavioral Supervision Report, the BdP states that the number of complaints received remained stable overall, at around 33 thousand, and that the non-compliance rate detected in the analysis of these complaints fell from 13.8% in 2024 to 6.3% in 2025.
According to data cited by Lusa, the supervisor received 33,375 complaints in 2025, 2.3% less than in the previous year. Of these, 22,795 were within BdP’s competences, which represents an increase of 1.1%.
Deposits were the most complained about topic
Bank deposits continued to be the most complained about matter, representing 32% of complaints within the regulator’s jurisdiction. Consumer credit followed, with 27%, above the 25% recorded in 2024.
Credit transfers also gained weight, rising from 8% to 11% of complaints. Payment cards also represented 11%, while housing and mortgage credit fell from 13% in 2024 to 10% in 2025.
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