Annual Review 2021–22
Contents
- About this Annual Review
- Year at a glance
- Acknowledgement of country
- Board Chair message
- Chief Executive Officer and Chief Ombudsman message
- Organisational overview
- AFCA Independent Review
- Complaints
- Who complained to AFCA?
- Overview of complaints
- Open cases
- Closed cases
- Banking and finance complaints
- Buy now pay later
- Financial difficulty complaints
- Scams
- Small business complaints
- General insurance complaints
- Significant events
- Life insurance complaints
- Superannuation complaints
- Investments and advice complaints
- Cryptocurrency
- Complaints lodged by consumer advocates and financial counsellors
- Legacy complaints
- Complaints outside AFCA’s Rules
- Systemic issues
- Code compliance and monitoring
- Previous schemes
- Engagement, awareness and accessibility
- Corporate information
- AFCA General Purpose Financial Report 2021–22
- Appendix 1
- Glossary
Buy now pay later
The provision of buy now pay later payment options is generally not considered to be ‘credit’ under existing legislation. This means the provision of these services, and membership of AFCA in relation to them, is voluntary. AFCA currently has 10 identified financial firm members that belong to this category.
AFCA received 1,064 buy now pay later complaints in the last 12 months, which is up 39% on the previous year. The average time to resolve a buy now pay later complaint is 42 days.
The most complained about issues are service quality, credit enquiry, unauthorised transactions, incorrect costs or fees, and interpretation of product terms and conditions. Examples within some of these categories include:
- service quality, such as timeliness in responding to requests, manner of dealing with customers and effecting instructions as requested
- credit enquiry, which relates specifically to enquiries incorrectly listed on a credit file
- unauthorised transactions such as scams or fraud.
Buy now pay later complaint numbers are relatively low and only a small number make it to the Decision stage, with the financial firms resolving the majority of these complaints by agreement earlier in AFCA’s process.
“Your dispute resolution specialist was so easy to speak through the complaint with and understood both sides of the complaint, she also wants to ensure the complainant is heard and understands the trustees obligations.”
