Renata asked her bank to make reasonable adjustments when communicating with her, because she has autism. However, the bank failed to do this.
What happened
Renata has autism. She told her bank that she’d find communication with it easier if it only contacted her by text message or email between certain times of the day. Her bank agreed to make this adjustment.
Renata told us the bank had repeatedly failed to make the adjustments it had agreed to. She said that by not making the adjustments to take into account her individual needs, the bank had discriminated against her. The bank acknowledged it had made mistakes but considered an apology put things right.
What we said
We asked the bank to provide us with its contact notes. These showed that on several occasions over a couple of weeks, the bank had contacted Renata outside the agreed hours, by phone, without good reason.
We asked Renata how this had impacted her. Based on her response, we were satisfied that this had caused her unnecessary distress. In our view, the bank hadn’t fully appreciated the impact of their actions on Renata. We asked the bank to pay her some compensation to reflect the distress and inconvenience she’d experienced.