Customers Rights & Duties
In compliance with the Basic Circular number 134 of the Central Bank of Lebanon, Saradar Bank sal is pleased to inform you of the rights and duties of its customers as per the following:
First: Customer’s Rights
To take cognizance of the terms, conditions and details of the banking product or service, and to request ample explanations to be sure that he/she has understood them and can abide by them.
To obtain from the concerned employee a clear, ample and simplified explanation about the financial services and products with different risk levels.
To obtain from the concerned employee a professional and clear answer to any question concerning an ambiguous clause or condition.
To request the use of Arabic in any document, correspondence or transaction with the bank or financial institution.
To request to read and obtain in advance a copy of each document and text referred to any contract to be signed with the bank or financial institution.
To obtain and retain a copy of the contracts and documents signed by the customer, without bearing any additional cost.
To request the bank or financial institution to determine the actual cost of the product or service, including the actual insurance cost and the computational method of the lending or deposit interest rate.
To choose freely an insurance company among, at least, five companies that are accepted by the bank or financial institution and mentioned in a written list, in case obtaining the banking product or service is contingent upon the submission of an insurance policy to the bank or financial institution.
To obtain any banking product or service, provided it is suitable with the customer’s request, profile and perception of the likely financial risks associated to the product or service.
To obtain, for each product or service, a periodic detailed statement of account.
Refuse to sign a blank or incomplete Form and make sure all the required fields and figures in the Form to be signed by the customer are correct and complete.
To submit a claim about any service or product, and request from the bank or financial institution an explanation on the claim submission procedure, the time limit needed to be notified of the claim outcome, and the mechanism applied to submit the claim to other authorities whenever the customer is not convinced of the claim outcome.
Second: Customer’s Duties
Provide true, complete and accurate information when filling out any Form provided by the bank or financial institution, and refrain from providing any false information.
Disclose all financial obligations when applying for a product or service, without prejudice to the rights conferred to customers by the Banking Secrecy Law.
Update the personal information submitted to the bank or financial institution, on a continuous basis and whenever required to do so.
Comply with the terms and conditions governing the chosen service or product.
Promptly notify the bank or financial institution of any unknown operation on his/her account.
Provide the bank or financial institution with his/her home address, work address, email, ordinary mail, and telephone number, and report any change in this information to enable the bank or financial institution to contact the concerned customer personally and thus guarantee the privacy of information.
Third: Instructions to the Customer
Do not provide any other party, under any circumstances, with any details about your bank account or any other banking or critical information.
Whenever facing financial difficulties preventing you from meeting your obligations or paying your installments in due time, refer to the bank or financial institution in order to find out the best options, including the rescheduling of obligations.
Be careful when granting a proxy to a third party to complete your banking and financial transactions, by clearly determining the powers delegated under this proxy.
Complaint Form
Complaint Procedure
Dear Customer & Walk-in Client,
In our aim to provide you with the best quality of service, and as per BDL Circular 134 dated 12/2/2015, we, at Saradar Bank, welcome any comment from your side. In this respect, we have put at your disposal a simple and straight-forward complaint handling process, summarized as follows:
Submit your complaint by:
Filling the complaint form and depositing it in the Complaint Box available in all Saradar Bank branches, or
Filling the electronic complaint form on our website: www.saradarbank.com, or
Calling our Call Center on +9611214666, or
Sending your complaint via mail, to the Head Office, attention:
Customer Protection Unit
Saradar Bldg., Charles Malek Avenue, Ashrafieh, P.O.Box: 16-5766, Beirut, Lebanon
Customer Protection Unit
Saradar Bldg., Charles Malek Avenue, Ashrafieh, P.O.Box: 16-5766, Beirut, Lebanon
The Customer Protection Unit, located in the Head Office, receives the complaints:
From branches sending all complaints without opening the envelopes.
Directly from the system, for complaints submitted online.
From the Call Center where calls are recorded and forwarded.
Upon receiving your complaint, the Customer Protection Unit contacts you to collect any further information needed to resolve the issue.
Please note that the Customer Protection Unit will get back to you within a maximum of 15 days with the result of the complaint. Additional supporting documents may be requested from you, which might lead to an extension of another 15 days to solve the issue.
Your approval on the closure of the complaint will be documented by the Bank; accordingly, should you not take the initiative to receive our formal response, the Bank will send its response through regular mail in compliance with the Law.
Common Reporting Standards
The Common Reporting Standard (CRS), developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and approved by the G20 in February 2014, is a global reporting standard for automatic exchange of financial information (AEOI) to combat tax evasion and to improve cross-border tax compliance.
On May 11th 2016, the OECD announced that Lebanon committed to automatically share financial account information with other countries. On October 27th 2016, the Lebanese Parliament promulgated Lebanese Law Number 55 related to the “Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes”.
On May 12th 2017, the OECD announced that representatives of the Lebanese government signed the CRS Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA), thereby re-confirming Lebanon’s commitment to implement the automatic exchange of financial account information and commence exchanges in 2018. Saradar Bank is committed to adhere to the local and international regulations on tax evasion and reporting requirements.
Over 148 countries have committed to CRS. The complete list of countries can be found on the following link: AEOI-commitments
CRS requires banks to report annually financial information related to accounts held only by foreign tax resident.
This information consists of: full name, address, date of birth, country of residence and taxpayer identification number (“TIN”), account number, balance or value, the total gross amount of interest and dividends as well as the total gross proceeds from the sale or redemption of financial assets paid or credited to the account.
As a valued customer, we kindly ask you to maintain your relationship manager constantly informed on any update relevant to your personal information.
Should you have any questions about the contents of this letter, please do not hesitate to contact your relationship manager. Please note that this communication is for information only and shall not be considered in any case as tax advice.
However, we kindly advise you to refer to OECD for more information and explanations.
Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is US tax law enacted on March 18th, 2010. The purpose of the legislation is to prevent a perceived tax abuse by U.S. persons through the use of off-shore financial accounts either directly or through the use of foreign legal entities.
FATCA requires Foreign (non-US) Financial Institutions (FFIs) to identify US persons and to provide the Internal Revenue Service Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with information on US accounts.
On November 29th 2013, the Central Bank of Lebanon requests by its notification 897 all financial institutions operating in Lebanon to comply with FATCA provisions act to prevent financial and banking sectors from any risk.
On April 22th 2014, Saradar Bank has signed the FFI Agreement and thus enrolled to the FATCA classification as a Participating FFI. This entails that the Bank entered into an agreement with the IRS, obtained a GIIN, assigned a Responsible Officer (RO) to establish a compliance program that includes policies, procedures and process sufficient steps to comply with FATCA rules, committed to identify US accounts, disclose the requested information to the IRS.
In this context, Saradar Bank’s Global Intermediary Identification Number (GIIN) is QBGCMS.99999.SL.422
FATCA requires to report yearly certain type of information related to its US customers to the IRS through the International Data Exchange Service (IDES).
This information consists of: full name, address, Tax Identification number (“TIN”), account number, balance or value, the total gross amount of interest and dividends as well as the total gross proceeds from the sale or redemption of financial assets paid or credited to the account.
If the customer refuses to waive the banking secrecy toward IRS or to provide requested information and documents, or in case of contradiction or confusion in the documents submitted, to classify the client as defined by FATCA “Recalcitrant Account”, and to terminate the relationship and to close the account with a reasonable period of time.
Should you have any questions about the contents of this letter, please refer to the U.S. IRS department or to your tax advisor for more information and explanations.
Lists of Tariffs
Please find below our list of tariffs
