The Australian Financial Complaints Authority has announced the completion of a three-year program responding to the 2021 Independent Review of its operations, saying the work had redefined its approach to external dispute resolution and positioned AFCA as a global leader in its field.
The Independent Review Response Program was launched in response to 13 recommendations of the 2021 independent review of AFCA undertaken by Treasury.
ASIC said in a media release that an independent review it commissioned of its decision makers rated 90 per cent of the randomly chosen case files as being “excellent” to “good”.
The program coincided with a period when complaints from consumers to AFCA escalated, reaching a record of nearly 105,000 in FY24 – double the number of complaints recorded by its three predecessor schemes in their final year.
The independent review’s recommendations were aimed at enhancing AFCA’s operations and complaint handling process.
Over the past three years, AFCA said it had delivered a wide-ranging and impactful set of outcomes in response to the report, including but not limited to:
- Developing additional guidance on how AFCA approaches further issues in complaints or excluding wholesale client complaints;
- Strengthening consultation on the development of AFCA approach documents and a forward looking review mechanism to keep Approaches current;
- Greater transparency about the role of the AFCA independent assessor;
- Clarity about the respective roles of AFCA and regulators in the identification and investigation of systemic issues;
- Completely transforming AFCA’s systemic issues and funding models;
- Developing a new case management system and customer portals to improve efficiency of our service;
- Undertaking independent audits of our decision-making and complaints handling to ensure we are engaging in fair process and fair outcomes; and
- Updated the rules and operational guidelines to improve our service and delivered greater guidance about the approach to responsible lending and lending to small business.
