Most guides to complaining about a Canadian bank are written from other guides. That is how a wrong number survives for years. The complaint deadline in this country is not a customer service target and it is not folklore. It is a period set by federal regulation, and the bank has to give you a document that starts the clock.
So this page is built the other way around. Every deadline below comes from the primary source: the Bank Act, the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations, and the published Terms of Reference of the body that reviews your complaint if the bank does not fix it. Section numbers are given so you can check each one yourself in about two minutes.
A correction to our own page. An earlier version of this guide, published in April 2025, told readers they could escalate once 90 days had passed. That was wrong under the current framework. The prescribed period is 56 days, set by section 14 of the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations, and OBSI states the same figure. If you read the old version and waited 90 days, you did not lose your rights, you simply waited longer than you had to. The page was rewritten from primary sources on 2 August 2026.
The short answer
Complain to the bank in writing. Every federally regulated institution is required to have a complaints process and to designate employees to receive and deal with complaints.
The bank must send you a written acknowledgment of the date it received the complaint. That date is the start of the clock, so it is the most valuable piece of paper in the file.
The bank has 56 days. Section 14 of the regulations sets the prescribed period at 56 days after the day on which the complaint is received.
Then it goes to OBSI, free. The Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments has been Canada's only external complaints body for banking since 1 November 2024. You have 180 calendar days from the bank's written answer to bring it there.
OBSI can recommend up to $350,000 per complaint. Its recommendations are not binding, but a firm that refuses one gets named.
The 56 day clock, and where it comes from
Two provisions do all the work here, and they sit in two different documents, which is exactly why so many articles get it wrong.
An institution shall establish procedures that are satisfactory to the Commissioner for dealing, within the prescribed period, with complaints.
Bank Act, section 627.43(1)(a)The Act does not say how long the period is. It says "the prescribed period", which is drafting language meaning the number lives in a regulation. The regulation is where you find it:
For the purposes of paragraph 627.43(1)(a) of the Act, the prescribed period for dealing with a complaint is 56 days after the day on which the complaint is received.
Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations, SOR/2021-181, section 14Fifty six days is eight weeks exactly. OBSI puts the same rule in one sentence for consumers: banks and federal credit unions have 56 days to help you. So the statute, the regulation and the ombudsman all agree, and any article telling you to wait 90 days is describing an older world.
Why the start date matters more than the deadline. Fifty six days from what? From the day the complaint was received, which is a fact only the bank can confirm and which the Act requires it to confirm in writing. If you complained by phone, there is no such document and the clock is arguable. If you complained in writing and kept the acknowledgment, the clock is not arguable at all. That single difference is the reason to always put it in writing.
Step 1: the complaint to the bank, and what the bank owes you
Start inside the bank. You have to: the external body will not look at a complaint the firm has not had a fair chance to answer. But the internal stage is not a black box, because the Act tells the bank exactly what it must hand back to you.
An institution shall provide a person who makes a complaint with (a) a written acknowledgment of the date on which it received the complaint; (b) the information referred to in paragraphs 627.65(a) to (c); and (c) any information that is necessary to enable them to meet the requirements of the procedures.
Bank Act, section 627.43(4)Follow the cross reference and section 627.65 turns out to be a short list of three things the bank must disclose to its customers and to the public:
- its procedures for dealing with complaints, established under section 627.43(1)(a),
- the name of the external complaints body and how to contact it, and
- the Agency's mailing address, website address and telephone number.
In practice that means a complaint made properly should produce three things in your inbox: a dated acknowledgment, the bank's own complaint procedure, and the contact details for the independent body that reviews it. If you get none of those, note the absence. It becomes part of the file.
Section 627.43(1) also requires the institution to designate one officer or employee responsible for implementing the procedures, and one or more to receive and deal with complaints. There is a named human whose job this is. Asking to have your complaint directed to the designated complaints channel, in those words, tends to move a file faster than asking for a manager.
The word ombudsman is regulated, and this is the trick worth knowing
Several Canadian banks operate an internal escalation office with the word ombudsman in its name or in how staff describe it. Consumers reasonably read that word as independent. Federal law is unusually direct about this.
An institution shall not use any misleading term with respect to its procedures or designated officers or employees, including any term that suggests that the procedures, officers or employees are independent of the institution, such as the term "ombudsman" or any other term with a similar meaning, or any prescribed term.
Bank Act, section 627.43(2)Read that carefully, because it changes how you should treat the second stage of an internal process. An internal review office, whatever it is called, is the bank reviewing itself. That is not a criticism of the people who work there and internal review does resolve a great many complaints. It is simply that the independence you are looking for arrives at the next stage, not at that one. If you are being told to wait for an internal ombudsman decision and your 56 days are nearly up, you do not have to keep waiting.
Step 2: OBSI, the only external complaints body since November 2024
This part of the landscape changed recently enough that most published advice is stale.
Starting today, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI) will serve as Canada's sole, designated External Complaints Body (ECB) for banking.
OBSI announcement, 1 November 2024, following designation by the Minister of FinanceBefore that date, different banks belonged to different external complaints bodies and the first job of any complainant was to work out which one applied to their bank. That step is gone. Whichever federally regulated bank you deal with, the external body is OBSI.
You can bring your complaint to OBSI in either of two situations: the 56 days have passed without your complaint being resolved, or you have received the bank's final response and you are not satisfied with it. There is no fee.
The four limits inside OBSI's mandate
These come from OBSI's own Terms of Reference, the version effective 16 June 2022, read on 2 August 2026. They matter because a complaint that falls outside any one of them is closed without being investigated, and the most common reason is simply time.
| Limit | What it says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 180 days to escalate | The complaint was made to OBSI no more than 180 calendar days after you received a written notice rejecting the complaint, or a written offer to resolve it, from the firm. OBSI may extend this. | Terms of Reference, section 5.1(d) |
| Six years from when you knew | The complaint was made to the firm no more than six years after you knew or reasonably ought to have known about the problem, judged by what a reasonable person in your circumstances ought to have known. | Terms of Reference, section 5.1(e) |
| No parallel court case | You have not commenced proceedings in a court or before an arbitration tribunal to decide the same subject matter. | Terms of Reference, section 5.1(f) |
| $350,000 ceiling | OBSI may not recommend that a firm pay more than $350,000 in respect of any single complaint. Separate complaints about unrelated subject matters each carry their own $350,000 limit, and a complaint may not be split to get around the ceiling. | Terms of Reference, sections 10.1 to 10.3 |
The honest part: the recommendation is not binding
OBSI's Terms of Reference say so in as many words, at section 13.7: OBSI's recommendations will not be binding on the participating firm or the complainant. Anyone telling you the ombudsman can order your bank to pay is overselling it.
What gives the process real weight is what happens next. Section 13.8 sets out the consequences of refusing a recommendation, beginning with disclosure to OBSI's Board and to the firm itself. A refusal does not stay private. For an institution whose entire business depends on being trusted with other people's money, a published refusal to follow an independent recommendation is expensive in a way that the payment usually is not. That is why non binding recommendations get complied with far more often than the word non binding suggests.
Where the regulator fits, and what we will not claim
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada appears throughout this framework, and its role is supervisory rather than adjudicative. You can see that in the statute itself without reading anything else:
- Section 627.43(1)(a) requires the bank's complaint procedures to be satisfactory to the Commissioner.
- Section 627.43(3) requires the bank to file a copy of its procedures with the Commissioner as they are amended from time to time.
- Section 627.65(c) requires the bank to disclose the Agency's mailing address, website address and telephone number to its customers and to the public.
So the Agency sets the standard the bank's process has to meet, holds the filed procedures, and must be findable by you. The job of dealing with the merits of your individual complaint is given to the bank first and then to the external complaints body. Telling the regulator that a bank appears to have breached an obligation is worth doing, and it is a different act from asking for your money back.
What we did not verify, and why we are saying so. We tried to re-read the Agency's own published description of how it handles consumer complaints on 2 August 2026 and canada.ca refused every automated request we made that day, as it has intermittently for weeks. Rather than paraphrase from memory or from a secondary site, we have limited this section to what the Bank Act itself says. If you want the Agency's own current wording, it is on their website, and their contact details are also required to be on your bank's.
What to put in the complaint
There is no prescribed form. There is a shape that works, because it gives whoever reads it the things they need to decide anything.
1. One sentence saying what you want
Put the remedy at the top, not the bottom. Reverse the $47 in charges applied on 12 July. Release the hold on the cheque deposited on 3 June. Correct the reporting to the credit bureau. A complaint without a requested outcome gets answered with an apology, because an apology is the only thing you asked for.
2. Dates, amounts, and account references
Every event with the date it happened and the dollar figure attached. If someone told you something on a call, give the date and the time. Investigators can pull a call recording from a timestamp. They cannot pull one from "sometime in June".
3. The rule you say was broken, if you know it
You do not have to cite law and nobody will penalise you for not doing it. But a complaint that says "I was charged $45 for an NSF item on 12 July, and the cap in section 10.1 of the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations is $10" is a different document from one that says the fee felt unfair. One of those has an obvious answer.
4. A request for the written acknowledgment
Ask explicitly for the written acknowledgment of the date of receipt required by section 627.43(4)(a) of the Bank Act. It is due to you anyway, and asking for it by name tends to produce it. It also quietly signals that you know what the process is, which changes how the file is handled.
5. Send it in a way that leaves a record
Secure message inside online banking, or email, or a letter you keep a copy of. Then keep everything in one place: your complaint, the acknowledgment, every response, and a one line log of every call. If this ever reaches OBSI, that folder is your case, and assembling it after the fact is far harder than keeping it as you go.
What actually works, and what to complain about
The complaints that get resolved are the ones tied to an obligation with a date on it. These are the ones we see most often, each with the guide that sets out the underlying rule.
| The problem | The rule it points at |
|---|---|
| An NSF charge above $10 | The federal cap and its two exceptions, in the guide to the $10 NSF cap |
| Fees you were never told about | What the bank must disclose and at which tier, in what Canadian bank fees actually cost |
| A hold on a deposited cheque | The maximum hold periods, in how long a bank can hold a cheque |
| Being refused an account | The identification rules and the right to open, in when a bank refuses to open an account |
| An account frozen without explanation | The mechanisms and who authorised them, in why a bank account gets frozen |
| Money moved to cover a debt you owe the bank | The contractual power and its limits, in the right of offset |
| An unauthorised card transaction | The liability rules, in debit card fraud and disputing a credit card charge |
| Collection conduct on a debt owed to the bank | The prescribed practices, in the rules banks must follow when collecting |
Keep the money you live on out of the fight
A complaint can take the full 56 days, and then longer. During that time the worst position to be in is having every dollar you live on sitting in the same account as the problem. A second account at a different institution, holding only the income you need this month, means a hold, a freeze or a disputed charge does not also decide whether you eat. That only makes sense if the second account is free, because paying a monthly fee for a safety net defeats the point. KOHO is a Canadian no fee prepaid Mastercard account that takes direct deposit and Interac e-Transfer and notifies you on every transaction, so you also see a new problem the day it starts.
See how the account worksGet the free Canadian Banking Rights Playbook
The plain English version of the rules banks would rather you skimmed: what they can take, what they must tell you, the fee caps that came into force in 2026, and the exact complaint path with every deadline on one page. One file, no fluff.
Common questions
Fifty six days. Section 627.43(1)(a) of the Bank Act requires procedures for dealing with complaints within the prescribed period, and section 14 of the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations sets that period at 56 days after the day the complaint is received. OBSI states the same figure for consumers. Guides saying 90 days are describing the older framework.
Then the bank has missed an obligation, and you should say so in writing. Section 627.43(4)(a) requires the institution to provide a written acknowledgment of the date on which it received the complaint. Without it the start of the 56 day period is arguable, which is a problem for you rather than for them. Ask for the acknowledgment by name, note that you are asking under section 627.43(4)(a), and keep the request itself as evidence of when you asked.
No. Section 627.43(2) of the Bank Act specifically prohibits an institution from using a misleading term that suggests its procedures or designated employees are independent of the institution, and it names the term ombudsman as an example. An internal office is the bank reviewing itself. It often resolves things, and there is nothing wrong with using it, but the independent stage is the external complaints body and the 56 day clock does not stop while an internal review runs.
OBSI, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, and it is the only one. OBSI announced on 1 November 2024 that starting that day it would serve as Canada's sole designated External Complaints Body for banking, following designation by the Minister of Finance. Any guide that tells you to first work out which external body your particular bank belongs to is out of date.
One hundred and eighty calendar days after you received a written rejection of the complaint or a written offer to resolve it, under section 5.1(d) of OBSI's Terms of Reference, and OBSI may extend that time. There is also a six year outer limit under section 5.1(e): the complaint must have been made to the firm no more than six years after you knew or reasonably ought to have known about the problem. Missing the 180 days is the most common way a good complaint dies.
No, and it is better to know that at the start. Section 13.7 of OBSI's Terms of Reference says its recommendations will not be binding on the firm or the complainant. The ceiling on what it may recommend is $350,000 for any single complaint under section 10.1. What gives the process force is section 13.8: a firm that refuses a recommendation faces disclosure of that refusal, which for a deposit taking institution is a real cost.
Understand first that these are alternatives, not a sequence. Section 5.1(f) of OBSI's Terms of Reference makes a complaint ineligible if you have commenced court or arbitration proceedings about the same subject matter. So starting a claim can close the free route. For a small, well documented amount, the complaint path costs nothing, takes weeks rather than months and does not require a filing fee. Weigh the two before you file anything.
The Bank Act provisions and the regulations on this page apply to federally regulated institutions, which includes the banks most Canadians use and federal credit unions. A credit union incorporated provincially is regulated by its province and will have its own complaint process and its own external review body, often a provincial deposit insurer or a designated ombudsman service. The shape of the process is usually similar. The section numbers and the 56 day period on this page are not the ones that govern it, so check the provincial rules rather than assuming.
Related guides
- Unauthorized e-Transfers in Canada, and who actually pays
- Unclaimed bank balances in Canada: how to search and claim yours
- The $10 NSF fee cap and the two exceptions inside it
- What Canadian bank fees actually cost in 2026
- Your rights when a bank refuses to open an account
- Why is my bank account frozen, and how do I get access back
- Can your bank take money from your account to pay a debt
- How long a Canadian bank can hold a cheque
- Debit card fraud in Canada and who pays
- How to dispute a credit card charge in Canada
- The rules a bank must follow when collecting a debt
- Low cost and no cost bank accounts: who qualifies
Disclosure: Some links on this page are referral links, and Bremo may earn a commission if you open an account, at no cost to you. It does not change what we recommend, and we have no relationship with OBSI or with any bank named here. Sources, all read on 2 August 2026: sections 627.43 and 627.65 of the Bank Act, S.C. 1991, c. 46, and sections 10.1 and 14 of the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations, SOR/2021-181, in the consolidated texts on the federal Justice Laws website, which state that the regulations are current to 2026-06-14 and were last amended on 2026-03-12; OBSI's Terms of Reference, the version effective 16 June 2022, sections 5.1, 10.1 to 10.3, 13.7 and 13.8; OBSI's consumer page on how the complaint process works, for the 56 day and 180 day figures in plain language; and OBSI's announcement of 1 November 2024 that it had become Canada's sole designated External Complaints Body for banking. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada's own complaints pages could not be read that day because canada.ca refused automated requests, so nothing in the regulator section goes beyond what the Bank Act itself sets out. This is general information about a process, not legal advice about your situation.