Neon Cuts Regulatory Complaints 44%

About the Customer

Neon is one of Brazil's largest and fastest-growing digital banks, serving millions of customers across Latin America with a mission to democratize financial access and simplify banking.

But like every digital-first bank operating in a highly regulated market, Neon faced a challenge that no product feature could fix on its own: regulatory reputation.

In Brazil, the Central Bank (BACEN) publishes a quarterly Complaint Ranking that measures customer-service quality across the country's 15 largest financial institutions. The ranking is public, it directly shapes regulatory reputation, and it is calculated from three inputs: complaint volume, complaint validity rate (how many complaints are judged to have merit), and customer-base size. The closer to 15th place, the better the standing.

In January 2026, Neon's position was dire: 4th place, one of the worst spots among the major banks. With a complaint index of 39.59 and a 35.2% validity rate, Neon faced reputational damage, regulatory scrutiny, and the need for urgent, structural change

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The Situation: A Fragmented, Reactive Operation

Neon's struggle wasn't about customer indifference. It was about operational fragmentation, and underneath it, a lack of visibility into what was actually driving complaints. The problems had compounded:

• The majority of regulatory responses were submitted on the final day of the deadline, compromising quality and the ability to defend against complaints.
• No standardized response templates: each reply was built from scratch, leaving room for inconsistency and error.
• Heavy dependence on business teams to gather evidence, slowing the process and often making deadlines impossible to meet.
• Customer voice moved slowly through the organization, delaying root-cause fixes; knowledge was fragmented across departments.
• Meetings with BACEN were purely operational, lacking strategic partnership or involvement from the teams who could implement solutions.
• First-level CSAT was stagnant, driving frustration and escalations to critical channels.

The challenge was systemic: how do you turn a reactive, fragmented operation into a structured system that reduces complaints, improves response quality, and moves the needle on regulatory reputation? Neon's answer started with seeing the problem clearly.

How Birdie Helped: From Symptoms to Root Causes

Neon partnered with Birdie to build the Customer Intelligence layer its regulatory operation had been missing. Instead of treating complaints one at a time, Neon could finally see the patterns underneath them: which behaviors, products, and process gaps were generating regulatory issues. Birdie powered three shifts:

• Complete voice capture: every complaint from BACEN (6,722 in the period) plus 28,500 support interactions were analyzed without sampling, classified by area, root cause, and product, and fed into 8 data sources integrated into Neon's workspace.
• A customer-centered culture: a virtual forum in Birdie where every BACEN complaint was tagged, shared with the whole organization in real time, and evaluated for merit, turning regulatory complaints from a CX-only concern into an enterprise-wide signal.
• Quality monitoring: a QA module (Frontline Intelligence) to evaluate first-level service interactions, with planned expansion to critical channels.

This is the shift that mattered. Neon moved from treating symptoms (responding to complaints faster) to treating root causes, preventing complaints from being filed in the first place. Improving a regulatory ranking, it turns out, is less a customer-service problem than a root-cause identification problem, and that is exactly what Birdie made visible.

From Insights to Action

With root causes finally visible, Neon acted on them through a coordinated program. Birdie's intelligence set the priorities; these initiatives executed against them:

• Code Yellow governance: in January 2026, Neon declared a maximum-priority protocol to accelerate root-cause resolution on the biggest complaint drivers, reinforcing the Customer Forum with strict cadence and accountability.
• Standardized responses: during Q1 2026, Neon created and revised 100% of response templates for both customers and BACEN, with a deepened evidence checklist aligned to the regulator.
• Operational autonomy for CX: the CX team gained direct autonomy to collect evidence and product-journey data without intermediaries, lifting First Call Resolution 35%.
• Blueteca (AI knowledge base): an integrated knowledge base of 1,000+ internal processes, powered by Gemini, drove faster, more accurate responses; analysts with moderate tool usage showed a 2% CSAT lift over low usage.
• First-level prioritization: a prioritization model for complex issues and high-risk customers doubled as a testing lab; it cut dispute analysis time by 80%, contributing directly to a 49% drop in dispute complaints to BACEN.
• Strategic engagement with BACEN: from February 2026, BACEN meetings shifted from operational to strategic, presenting initiatives for validation with the implementing teams in the room, not just CX.

"Birdie's technology was an important lever for structuring the voice of the customer in our operation. Having this data centralized gave us the speed we needed to make strategic decisions and transform our regulatory reputation."

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Mariana de Abreu Uvo, Head of Customer Service Operations, Neon

Results: From Crisis to Competitive Position

Across three quarters (Q4 2025 - Q2 2026), results moved consistently across every dimension.

Regulatory impact

• Ranking position: 4th -> 8th -> 12th place, confirmed in BACEN's Q2 2026 (2T26) ranking. The closer to 15th, the better.
• Complaint index: 39.59 -> 22.05 (-44%), per BACEN's official Q2 2026 report (down from a projected 30.55).
• Q2 2026 detail: 603 valid complaints across a base of ~27.3M clients, placing Neon 12th of the 15 largest institutions.
• Complaint validity rate: 35.2% -> 29.8% (-15%)
• First Call Resolution (FCR): improved 35%

Ranking position and complaint index are from BACEN's public Q2 2026 (2T26) report; complaint validity rate and FCR are Neon's internal metrics.

Operational impact

• Responses submitted before deadline: last-day submissions cut by 57%
• Dispute analysis time: -80%
• Dispute complaints to BACEN: -49%
• Standardized response templates: 100% created / revised

Experience impact

• First-level CSAT: improved 12% (best in Neon's history)
• Reclame Aqui (public review platform): maintained the RA Mil seal throughout the period, proving consistency beyond regulatory channels.

The trajectory is structural, not tactical. Neon didn't just improve metrics. It rebuilt the operating model that will sustain those gains going forward.

Beyond the Numbers: A New Regulatory Operating Model

What Neon built is rare in fintech: customer intelligence feeding regulatory strategy.

Every week, CX intelligence drove product priorities. Every day, executives saw the signal from customer complaints. Every month, the metrics moved: not because Neon hired more people or simply moved faster, but because Birdie turned fragmented feedback into integrated operational advantage.

For a digital bank in a highly regulated market, where regulatory reputation directly shapes trust and growth, this shift from reactive compliance to proactive, customer-driven governance isn't just a competitive advantage. It's structural viability.

Customer summary

Neon is one of Brazil's largest digital banks, democratizing financial access across Latin America for millions of customers.

See how Birdie turns regulatory complaints into strategic business intelligence.

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