Neville Melville, who was appointed to head the Office of the Banking Adjudicator, said the code of conduct had helped to make bank employees more conscious of customer service, and banks had started to honour their undertakings in terms of the code.

But he was concerned that the banks were treating the code more as something to aspire to than as a set of principles governing conduct.

Melville was presenting the first annual report of the adjudicators' office, which deals with complaints from members of the public who cannot get redress directly from their banks.

The adjudicator, which took over the files of the old ombudsman's office, received 2 561 new complaints during 2000 and closed 2 723 cases.