AFCA is proud to share its 2021–22 Annual Review, highlighting all we have achieved in the last financial year.   

The financial services sector in Australia has experienced an extraordinary level of uncertainty and volatility in the last financial year.  

This has been driven by the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, unanticipated interest rate rises, rapid inflation, intensifying climate-driven disasters, and the rise of new financial products and services.  

These factors have, in turn, had an impact on consumers of financial services and the types of complaints AFCA has received during this period. 

AFCA received more than 72,000 complaints from consumers and small businesses between 1 July 2021 and 30 June 2022 and helped to resolve more than 71,000 complaints.  

We had 42,488 members at the end of June 2022. Around three quarters (32,032) were Authorised Credit Representatives, while 10,456 were Financial Services Providers. 

Only 16% of members received a complaint about them, the same as the previous year. 

AFCA continued its work to improve the experience for our members. We are proud to report that member satisfaction slightly increased in 2021–22 reaching 77%. 

We implemented a series of membership service improvements over the last year which has simplified membership renewal processes for our smaller members, many of which are small businesses. 

We also launched a new digital platform to help financial firms better manage complaints that reach external dispute resolution. The Member Benchmarking Dashboard went live in late 2021 and provides real-time complaints data to give individual firms a greater understanding of their complaints handling performance, including how quickly they are being resolved. 

We know it is the day-to-day experiences that are important to our members, and our focus in the coming year is to continue increasing the value we offer and make it easier to do business with AFCA.  

New inclusions in the Annual Review

Greater transparency 

For the first time, data from the previous years was included to enable comparison of performance year-on-year. We have done this to increase transparency about complaint trends, with the ultimate goal of improving practices and minimising complaints. We have also included more information about where complaints resolve in our processes and in who’s favour.   

Increased financial reporting

As recommended in the AFCA Independent Review, we have included more information about how AFCA uses member funds. We have included an easy-to-read high-level breakdown of how AFCA used its funds in 2021–22, along with AFCA’s 2022 General Purpose Financial Report.

Key statistics

Read the 2021–22 AFCA Annual Review here.