2020-12-30

Provision of a professional human telephone response

The Bank of Israel issued Circular C-06-2638 to amend Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive 426 regarding senior citizen services. The regulation lowers the minimum age for priority telephone queue access from 75 to 70 years old. This change, initially introduced as a temporary coronavirus measure, is now applied permanently to routine banking operations effective upon publication.

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Bank of Israel Banking Supervision Department Bank–Customer Division Regulation (Bank–Customer) Unit December 27, 2020 Circular Number C-06-2638 To: The banking corporations Re: Provision of a professional human telephone response (Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive 426) Introduction

  1. In order to enable many more older customers to receive the optimal service via the banking corporation’s call center, the definition of “Senior citizen” in the Directive was revised, so that the minimum age at which the customer will receive priority in the queue for a phone response is 70.
  2. Following consultations with the Advisory Committee on Banking Business Affairs, and with the approval of the Governor, I have established this directive. The change to the directive
  3. In Section 4 of the Directive, in the definition of “Senior citizen”, “70” shall replace “75”. Explanatory remarks The age at which customers will receive priority in the queue for a phone response by the banking corporation was updated, and will now be 70, rather than 75. This amendment was made within the framework of Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive no. 250—Adjustments to Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directives for Dealing with the Coronavirus (Temporary Provision), and it was decided to apply it to routine times as well. Application
  4. The amendment to the directive shall go into effect on the day it is published. File update

Bank of Israel Banking Supervision Department Bank–Customer Division Regulation (Bank–Customer) Unit 5. Update pages for the Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directives file are attached. The following are the update instructions: Remove page Insert page (6/19) [1] 426-1-3 (12/20) [2] 426-1-3 Sincerely, Yair Avidan Supervisor of Banks