THE number of complaints about Shanghai's banks fell in the third quarter as lenders improved their services during the Olympics, the local banking regulator said yesterday.

The Shanghai Bureau of the China Banking Regulatory Commission said yesterday that complaints it received fell from 451 in July to 368 in August and 344 in September, the third drop in a row.

The total number of complaints in the third quarter dropped by 11.92 percent compared with the second quarter. But it still marked an on-year rise of 18.19 percent, the watchdog said.

Credit cards, wealth management products and service fees were the main complaints. Another area of concern is the aggressive promotion of high-risk products by bank staff to clients.

The local bureau is also drafting an industry-wide complaints solving practice in Shanghai, which is likely to be implemented in the first quarter of 2009.