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
Our members
All Australian financial services licensees, Australian credit licensees, authorised credit representatives and superannuation trustees are required to be members of AFCA. Our members include banks, insurers, credit providers, financial advisers, debt collection agencies, superannuation trustees and many more.
AFCA can receive complaints about a member’s service from consumers and small businesses, and will work with all parties to resolve the complaint fairly. Members also receive complaints handling data, insights and guidance from AFCA to help them improve their service and prevent future complaints.
AFCA had 42,488 members at the end of June 2022. Around three quarters (32,032) were authorised credit representatives (ACRs), while 10,456 were Financial Services Providers (FSPs).
The majority of our members are small and medium enterprises, such as mortgage brokers, finance brokers, financial advisers/planners, credit providers and accountants.
Most of our members do not have complaints made against them. In 2021–22, only 16% of members received a complaint about them, the same as the previous year.
|
2018–19 1 |
2019–20 |
2020–21 |
2021–22 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Number of members at 30 June |
37,488 |
40,493 |
40,760 |
42,488 |
|
Percentage of members who were ACRs |
72% |
74% |
74% |
75% |
|
Percentage of members who were FSPs |
28% |
26% |
26% |
25% |
Most common financial firm type 2021–22
Percentage of financial firms that had a complaint about them
Percentage of members by state and territory
Top five member types with the most complaints
|
2018–19 1 |
2019–20 |
2020–21 |
2021–22 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Bank (16,083) |
Bank (28,411) |
Bank (26,281) |
Bank (28,339) |
|
General insurer (9,306) |
General insurer (15,748) |
General insurer (13,896) |
General insurer (15,487) |
|
Credit provider (7,052) |
Credit provider (9,857) |
Credit provider (8,216) |
Credit provider (7,811) |
|
Debt collector or buyer (1,887) |
Superannuation fund trustee/adviser (4,734) |
Superannuation fund trustee/adviser (3,643) |
Superannuation fund trustee/adviser (3,765) |
|
Superannuation fund trustee/adviser ( 1,706) |
Debt collector or buyer (2,607) |
Underwriting agency (2,115) |
Life insurer ( 1,962) |
1 AFCA commenced on 1 November 2018. The 2018–19 financial year covers an 8-month period (from 1 Nov 2018 to 30 Jun 2019). Year-on-year changes between 18–19 and 19–20 have been calculated pro rata using monthly averages.
Member Benchmarking Dashboard
One of AFCA’s strategic goals is to provide a valued member experience that helps members improve internal practices to avoid or resolve disputes.
In November 2021, we launched a new digital platform to help financial firms better manage disputes that reach the ombudsman service.
The new AFCA Member Benchmarking Dashboard is an interactive platform for financial firms that provides near real-time complaints data and gives individual firms a greater understanding of their complaints, including how quickly they are being resolved. It also enables firms to compare their performance against an anonymised set of similar financial firms.
The dashboard was a significant milestone that will ultimately help financial firms reduce customer complaints.
Since launching, the dashboard has been viewed 3,438 times.
“Using the new dashboard, AFCA members can investigate the types of complaints they receive, how well they respond to disputes, and how their performance compares to other firms in their industry. By providing members with greater data and insights, we hope to help financial firms improve customer service and minimise disputes. ”
Use of member funds
AFCA is funded by annual member registration fees, user charges and complaint fees received from member financial firms and ACRs.
All Australian financial firms must be members of AFCA by law and are required to pay their registration fee and other complaint-related charges and to contribute to our operating costs.
If we receive a complaint against a firm, the firm is required to pay an individual complaint fee.
Our services are free of charge to small businesses and consumers who make a complaint.
The chart below outlines how AFCA used its funds in 2021–22.
For more details on our use of funds, please refer to our financial statements.
1 AFCA is currently undertaking an infrastructure replacement project to replace aging legacy technology which is captured in the strategic spend category. You can learn more about this project here.
