As in the Beatles song ‘Help!’, the Bank of Spain (BdE) has asked for help to deal with the sustained growth in claims it receives. The supervisor has opened a process to hire an external company to help with the management of these files. Last year, customers in the sector filed 34,330 claims with the monetary authority, 61% more than the previous year. With an initial budget of 2.78 million euros for the service, as stated in the Public Sector Contracting Platform, the period for receiving offers has been opened. The selected company will help the BdE to manage incidents related to mortgage loans and cards. These are the two areas where claims have increased the most. The task is not only to receive them, but also to process them and come up with proposals for resolutions, if applicable. The supervisor’s forecast is that this number of complaints will continue to rise in the coming years. For this 2022, a range between 36,000 and 40,000 claims is being considered. Cards and mortgages would account for two out of three. Nearly forty people from the bank’s staff are assigned to this department. The human resources to manage have not increased in the BdE and this generates a risk of non-compliance in the response periods established by law. This growing trend is not expected to subside in the coming years. In fact, for the initial period of the contract that has been advertised –between June 2023 and June 2023–, the estimated number of files expected ranges between 44,000 and 52,000. That is, up to 50% more than those currently received. It is not the first time It is not the first time that the BdE asks for help. The Department of Market Conduct and Claims has already resorted to this external assistance to be able to process the mountain of complaints about floor clauses in mortgages that were marketed without duly informing them. In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled on this issue and since then the number of claims skyrocketed this year and the next. The peak came in 2017 with more than 40,000. “The expenses of formalizing mortgage loans was another rise in claims detected,” sources in the entity explain. In 2020, the BdE contracted aid for two years with the possibility of extension. This contract is still in operation today. The idea now is to unify these contracts still in force in a new global one that helps in the two main open fronts: mortgages and cards. It would start operating from the middle of 2023. The support service could be expressly extended without being able to exceed five years. The total value for that period amounts to 7.5 million euros. What powers does the Bank of Spain have? The reports issued by the BdE regarding customer claims are not binding. Banks may or may not heed correction suggestions if the supervisor agrees with the consumer. “In 73% of the claims resolved with a report on the merits, the client has seen their claims satisfied, either because the claimed entity has acquiesced, or because it has decided to rectify its conduct after the report is issued,” explains the BdE in his last memory on it. It is known that, in this file procedure, the banks returned almost four million euros to their clients last year. It is the highest amount in the last decade. This claims service has existed for more than 35 years, “a basic element for the supervision of the conduct of entities”. This channel of communication with the client serves as a kind of early warning to the supervisor regarding products and services that may have an improvement path in the sector.