Annual Review 2023-24
Contents
- About this Annual Review
- Year at a glance
- Board Chair message
- Chief Executive Officer and Chief Ombudsman message
- Organisational overview
- Complaints
- Who complained to AFCA in 2023–24?
- AFCA Engagement with First Nations peoples
- Overview of complaints
- Open cases
- Closed cases
- Banking and finance complaints
- Buy now pay later
- Scam complaints
- Financial difficulty complaints
- 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
- Complaints outside AFCA’s Rules
- Systemic issues
- AFCA’s Code compliance and monitoring functiong
- Engagement, awareness and accessibility
- Corporate information
- AFCA General Purpose Financial Report
- Glossary
The Australian Parliament passed legislation in June 2023 to establish the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR) for commencement on 2 April 2024.
The CSLR is an important piece of the consumer protection framework in Australia. It was recommended by the Ramsay Review¹ to ‘promote trust and confidence in the external dispute resolution (EDR) framework and the financial services sector more broadly’ and was supported by the Financial Services Royal Commission.²
The scheme is funded by industry. Maximum individual compensation claims of $150,000 are available for eligible AFCA determinations of financial misconduct relating to personal financial advice, credit intermediation, securities dealing or credit provision.
At the Federal Government’s request, AFCA set up the scheme. This included ensuring the CSLR had the processes, systems, people and funding to receive and process claims for compensation.
The CSLR is now fully operational and a separate, independent organisation with its own CEO, Board and staff.
AFCA paused complaints processed
While establishing the CSLR, AFCA also addressed a backlog of approximately 5,000 complaints that had been on hold pending CSLR legislation. This effort involved updating AFCA’s processes and case management systems to integrate the CSLR framework.
Recognising the need to provide timely resolutions, we increased staffing numbers and appointed a Senior CSLR Ombudsman to expedite case investigations.
¹ Full report available on the Treasury website: Review of the financial system EDR and complaints framework
² More information available on the Royal Commissions website: Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry
