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
Legacy complaints
In 2019, following the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, the Commonwealth Government expanded AFCA’s jurisdiction to hear financial complaints related to conduct going back to 1 January 2008. This is outside the normal six-year rule that applies in AFCA.
AFCA was able to receive these ‘legacy’ complaints for a 12-month period that ended on 30 June 2020.
For the period of 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020, AFCA received 1,927 total legacy complaints.
From 1 July 2020, AFCA could no longer receive new legacy complaints, but could continue finalising complaints that were lodged during the legacy lodgment window.
In 2021–22, AFCA closed 166 legacy complaints. One hundred and thirty of these cases were closed at decision.
Legacy complaints are complex due to the time that has passed from the date of the event that gave rise to the claim. This has placed challenges on consumers and financial firms to provide documentation and accurate recollections relevant to the complaint.
Despite these challenges, AFCA has been successful in working with parties to reach outcomes for many legacy complaints. There were only 93 legacy complaints open at the end of 2021–22.
“Matters like these are insights for our business to improve on to improve the overall customer experience.”
