What costs people most with their banks is starting in the wrong place. The route the Central Bank of Kuwait publishes on its customer protection pages has two steps in an order that cannot be reversed. Here it is.
Step one is the bank itself
A complaint goes in on a form available at every branch of the supervised entity. Not to the Central Bank, and not on Twitter.
The bank must answer you in writing within five working days of receiving it. Other supervised entities — investment, finance and exchange companies — get fifteen working days. Credit information companies get fifteen days.
The answer has to say whether the entity has corrected the matter, or considers its own procedure sound.
When you may go straight to the Central Bank
In two cases and no others: the bank refused to give you the complaint form at all, or it did not answer you in writing within those five days.
Step two is the escalation
And it is accepted only once the written answer is in your hands. You attach a copy of it, along with your reasons and any supporting documents.
Five kinds that are not accepted
Anything before the courts or referred to the public prosecution. Anything concerning a body the Central Bank does not supervise. Complaints against investment funds. Vexatious complaints or ones with no substance. And anything already submitted once.
The channels
The customer protection portal on the Central Bank’s site, where the complaint form is published for download. The customer protection line is 1864444 and the switchboard is 1814444.
The Central Bank says it informs the complainant of the outcome by telephone, and that no one needs to attend in person.
What the Central Bank does not publish
None of its pages carries a date, so we cannot attribute the five-day rule to a specific circular. There is no published deadline binding the Central Bank itself to decide an escalation. And there are no statistics: how many escalations are filed a year, and how many are upheld. We looked and found none.
We did not enter the escalation portal itself, so we do not know whether it accepts a submission without a digital identity.
The practical summary
Ask for the form at the branch. Keep a copy. Count the five days. And do not go to the Central Bank without the paper they answer you on, because it is the condition of the escalation being accepted, not an extra document.
Photo: the Central Bank of Kuwait building. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: the customer protection pages on the Central Bank of Kuwait site — the introduction, complaints against banks, and escalations against banks — on 6 September 2026.
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