AFCA’s new member portal launches in 10 days – Monday 17 June. If you have any queries, please email membership@afca.org.au.

AFCA service availability during the transition period 

AFCA’s member phone line (1300 56 55 62), free call phone line (1800 931 678), Secure Services portal, and internal IT systems, will be unavailable from 4:30pm Thursday 13 June to 9am Monday 17 June.  

You can still contact AFCA during this time by emailing membership@afca.org.au or info@afca.org.au.   

If you need to contact an AFCA team member directly, you can still call or email their direct line. However, they cannot action outstanding tasks or new requests on existing complaints between 4:30pm Thursday 13 June and 9am Monday 17 June.  

Any notes, requests or responses received during this time will be actioned by AFCA as a priority from Monday 17 June.   

Extensions to response due dates 

To allow for AFCA’s system closures from 13 June 2024, and to assist members with their transition to the new member portal: 

• due dates that fall due between 13 June 2024 and 19 June 2024 (inclusive) will be automatically extended to Thursday 20 June 2024   
• due dates that fall due before 13 June 2024 but have not yet been closed/progressed by AFCA by 13 June 2024, will be extended to Thursday 20 June 2024  
• due dates that fall due on 14 June 2024 can still be submitted by email to info@afca.org.au.  

AFCA’s case management teams have also been asked to update complaints and amend due dates that fall between 13 June 2024 and 19 June 2024 (inclusive) and extend these to Thursday 20 June 2024.   

AFCA will not issue overdue responses during this period.   

While we are extending these timeframes, we encourage members to engage with the new portal to upload responses from 17 June 2024 as they are available. 

Notifying members of go-live 

AFCA will update its website on the evening of Sunday 16 June to confirm the launch of its new member portal. 

Each member will receive an email from AFCA on Monday 17 June inviting them to create a portal account. This email will include a link to the new portal, instructions to make an account, and what to do if you’re having trouble. You can also find a short video tutorial explaining how to create an account on our website here. 

It’s important that members use the email address associated with their membership to create their portal account (i.e., the receiving email address these instructions are sent to). 

Where a member has multiple contacts associated with its membership, each contact will receive separate instructions to create an account. 

Remember, once an email address has been used to create a portal account, it cannot be used again by any other user.  

What to do on day one (Monday 17 June) 

Once you create an account and successfully login to the portal, you should check your profile preferences (including contact information) and update accordingly.  

If you have open complaints, review all complaint details and any due dates. 

If you have multiple contacts associated with your membership, the Admin contact(s) can assign or re-assign role types based on your organisations preferences, and assign or re-assign complaints to team members. 

If you encounter a problem or need help, you can make a request through the new member portal ‘make a request’ function.  

Managing migrated cases (existing open complaints) in the new member portal 

As outlined in previous Member News and on the new member portal hub, when AFCA migrates complaints to its new systems, existing case numbers will change.   

Case numbers will be in the format XX-YY-ZZZZZZ, where XX will designate the type of case (with all financial complaints being “12”), YY the year of creation, and ZZZZZZ the unique case number.     

Migrated cases will keep their current case number with a new ‘12’ prefix and have ‘00’ as the year. For example, an existing financial complaint case 999999 will appear as 12-00-999999, and a new case created this year will be 12-24-123456. 

Members can easily identify a migrated case by checking the case number for a ‘12-00’ prefix. 

For migrated cases, only certain features of the new member portal are available due to system and data migration constraints.  

This means, for migrated cases members will see: 

• Referral due dates 
• Documents that were uploaded to Secure Services before shutdown. 

Members will not see: 

• Due dates set prior to 17 June for complaints at Jurisdiction, Case Management and Decision 
• Conciliation appointments scheduled prior to 17 June.  

For new complaints lodged from Monday 17 June, members will see all complaint details and documents associated with the case in the portal. 

Member benchmarking dashboard 

The member benchmarking dashboard will be available in new member portal from 1 July 2024. This means, it is unavailable from 5pm 13 June to 9am 1 July.  

Once live, the benchmarking dashboard will include minor visual and functional improvements to the version in Secure Services. All charts, data, and date periods remain the same. 

Improvements from 1 July 

• Faster performance 
• Ability to select and switch between memberships within the dashboard (no need for different login) 
• Information about a member’s attributes (such as tier, business size, primary business), to help identify other members suitable for comparison 
• Product and issue filters expanded to include full hierarchy (product line, product category, product, issue type, issue) 
• Ability to compare by total complaints received  
• Ability to compare case management merits assessment data 
• Improvement to resolution rate calculation 

Future enhancements  

AFCA has plans to make additional enhancements to its benchmarking dashboard based on member feedback – such as grouping of financial firms. We hope to provide more information on this soon. 

More information about the benchmarking dashboard and the improvements from 1 July will be available in the June edition of Member News.  

Post go-live support 

Self-help 

If support is needed, we encourage members to first refer to the learning resources on our website. We have a range of how-to guides, short video tutorials, eLearning modules and other information on our website here.  

Live chat 

The new member portal includes a Live Chat function. This chat can be used for simple questions and guidance where you may need additional support or information about a new process or function.   

Make a request through the portal 

If your matter is not urgent, or relates to a complaint, you can make a request through the portal.  

Membership services contact centre 

Members can also call the member phone line (1300 56 55 62) or email membership@afca.org.au. We do expect to receive a high number of emails and calls at go-live. We will do our best to respond as quickly as possible, however, response timeframes may be slower.