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
Complaints
- 104,861 complaints received. Up 8% on 2022-23
- 104,203 complaints closed. Up 21% on 2022-23
- The average time to close a complaint was 74 days¹
- 29,236²open cases. Up 1% on 2022-23
- $313,903,256 in compensation was awarded to consumers through AFCA’s dispute resolution processes
Complaints received by product line³
|
Product line |
Total |
|---|---|
|
Banking and finance |
60,076 |
|
General insurance |
29,335 |
|
Superannuation |
7,325 |
|
Investments and advice |
3,559 |
|
Life insurance |
1,449 |
|
Not yet determined |
1,042 |
Complaints closed by product line³
|
Product line |
Total |
|---|---|
|
Banking and finance |
59,156 |
|
General insurance |
28,684 |
|
Superannuation |
7,701 |
|
Investments and advice |
4,118 |
|
Life insurance |
1,411 |
- 5,715 complaints about financial difficulty received
- 4,466 small business complaints received
- 10,355 complaints excluded due to being outside AFCA’s jurisdiction⁴
Average time taken to close complaints
|
Time |
Percentage |
|---|---|
|
0-30 days |
33% |
|
31-60 days |
28% |
|
61-180 days |
26% |
|
181-365 days |
10% |
|
Greater than 365 days |
3% |
Open cases by age as at 30 June 2024
|
Time |
Percentage |
|---|---|
|
0-30 days |
24% |
|
31-60 days |
18% |
|
61-180 days |
28% |
|
181-365 days |
12% |
|
Greater than 365 days |
17%⁵ |
- 4,380 small business complaints closed
- 5,797 financial difficulty complaints closed
Complaints closed before determination
|
|
Total |
|---|---|
|
Total |
99,853 |
|
Resolved by agreement or in favour of complainant⁶ |
72% |
|
Resolved in favour of financial firm |
2% |
|
Outside Rules/Terms of Reference |
10% |
|
Discontinued/withdrawn |
15% |
Determinations
|
|
Total |
|---|---|
|
Total |
4,281 |
|
Found in favour of complainant |
30% |
|
Found in favour of financial firm |
70% |
¹ Average number of days the complaint was active.
² As at 30 June 2024.
³ Complaints may belong to more than one product type.
⁴ Includes 1,757 complaints found ineligible for the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR) and 812 complaints excluded on merit under OTR A.8.3.
⁵ Aged cases exclude paused complaints, complaints relating to test cases, batched complaints and cases subject to external litigation. 57% of cases over 365 days relate to the CSLR.
⁶ This includes complaints resolved through Conciliation, Negotiation, Preliminary Assessment, or resolved by the financial firm.
Complainants
Complaints received by state and territory
|
State and territory |
Percentage |
|---|---|
|
New South Wales |
30% |
|
Queensland |
18% |
|
Northern Territory |
1% |
|
Western Australia |
8% |
|
South Australia |
6% |
|
Victoria |
27% |
|
ACT |
2% |
|
Tasmania |
1% |
|
Not provided |
8% |
|
Other countries |
1% |
Top 10 languages (other than English) in which interpreters were requested
|
Language |
|---|
|
Mandarin |
|
Korean |
|
Arabic |
|
Cantonese |
|
Vietnamese |
|
Spanish |
|
Persian (Farsi) |
|
Hindi |
|
Punjabi |
|
Taiwanese |
- 3,158 complainants identified as First Nations peoples
- 2% of complainants required an interpreter service
Gender of complainants
Gender |
Percentage |
|---|---|
|
Female |
39% |
|
Male |
55% |
|
Other/unknown |
6% |
- 84% of complainants were self-represented
- 16% of complainants had a representative
Members
- 47,575 members
- 83% of members did not have a complaint lodged against them
Top five member types with the most complaints
|
Member type |
Total |
|---|---|
|
Banks |
41,790 |
|
General insurers |
21,702 |
|
Credit providers |
11,188 |
|
Superannuation fund trustee/advisers |
6,338 |
|
Underwriting agencies |
4,397 |
Customer service
- 200,917 calls to our phone lines
Calls to our phone lines
|
Phone line |
Total |
|---|---|
|
Consumer and small business |
138,339 |
|
Membership |
20,710 |
|
Significant event hotline |
13,457 |
- 28,411 online live chats
- Average wait time for calls 173 seconds
- Our service was provided in 78 languages other than English
- 76% of complaints were lodged online
Systemic issues
- Identification and investigation of systemic issues resulted in financial remediation of $44,706,897 to 159,051 consumers.
- 1,574 potential systemic issues identified
- 225 systemic issue investigations referred to financial firms
- 97 systemic issues reported to regulators
- 77 systemic issues resolved with financial firms
- 137 serious contraventions of the law and other breaches reported under section1052E(1)-(3) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth)
- 9 possible serious contraventions of the law reported to regulators
