2020–21 Annual Review
Contents
- About this Annual Review
- Board Chair message
- Chief Executive Officer and Chief Ombudsman message
- About us
- Strategic plan
- Year in review – strategic initiatives
- Year at a glance
- Membership
- Complaints
- Who complained to AFCA?
- Overview of complaints
- Open cases
- Complaints closed by AFCA
- Banking and finance complaints
- Scams
- General insurance complaints
- Superannuation complaints
- Investments and advice complaints
- Life insurance complaints
- Financial difficulty complaints
- Small business complaints
- Complaints lodged by consumer advocates
- Legacy complaints
- Conciliation
- Complaints outside the Rules
- Systemic issues
- Naming financial firms
- Significant events
- Stakeholder engagement
- People and culture
- Feedback about our service
- Independent Assessor Report
- Corporate information
- AFCA General Purpose Financial Report 2021
- Code compliance and monitoring
- Previous schemes
- Appendix 1
Member engagement
AFCA has a dedicated membership team that assists AFCA members with the management of their membership including applications, online assessments, annual forecasting and everyday membership enquires.
In 2020–21, AFCA worked proactively with stakeholders to improve and expand on our membership services. AFCA’s goal is to enable our members to interact with us more frequently and have greater access to information to help them manage complaints.
In the last financial year, AFCA commenced work on delivering a new member resources portal that includes training products, such as videos and webinars, to help members build capability in key areas of dispute management.
AFCA also began work on building tailored member benchmarking reports to assist with minimising disputes before they reach EDR.
To improve membership engagement, AFCA launched its monthly membership newsletter ‘Member News’. Sent to more than 30,000 subscribers every month, the newsletter includes important information and updates about AFCA, EDR and the financial services industry.
Member forums
AFCA member forums are a great opportunity for all our members to learn from AFCA’s senior staff, including ombudsmen and senior case management leaders. The forums give our members insights into complaint trends and issues, as well as the opportunity to understand how to apply this knowledge to their complaint handling practices, with the ultimate goal of minimising complaints.
The member forums facilitate a two-way conversation with our members about AFCA’s processes, and allow members to learn about our approach to decision-making.
In November 2020, AFCA held six virtual forum sessions across two days that received 4,549 total views from members across Australia. These forums included dedicated sessions on banking and finance, superannuation, life insurance, general insurance, and investments and advice.
The recordings and presentations for each of the forum sessions are available on the AFCA website at afca.org.au/news/webcasts.
AFCA member portal
The member portal is a secure online service available to all AFCA members. The member portal allows AFCA members to view and manage complaints, generate complaint statistics, update contact details and make payments to AFCA.
AFCA regularly updates the member resources with guidance on our process and our approach to recurring or emerging complaint issues.
In 2020–21, the member portal had 443,966 page views.
Industry liaison group meetings
Our industry liaison groups usually meet between two and four times a year to discuss issues relating to their specific industry. The group consists of 12–20 senior representatives from member firms, industry associations and AFCA.
Our industry groups represent superannuation, investments and advice, general insurance, life insurance, professional indemnity and medical indemnity.
