AFA News 14 July 2021. On 5 July 2021, AFCA issued a media release providing some useful analysis of the complaints that had been received during the course of the 2020/21 financial year.  In total they had received 70,510 complaints, however this was down 12% on the previous year.

AFCA have also provided a complaints snapshot, that includes a breakdown of complaints by each sector.  Financial advice is included within the investments group.  The two key financial advice complaints in this category of ‘Inappropriate advice’ (534) and ‘Failure to act in client’s best interests’ (525), reveals that financial advice complaints only make up a total of 1.5% of total complaints.  Bank complaints (26,281) and general insurer complaints (13,896) were the most significant source of complaints.

With little more than 1,000 advice complaints a year and 20,000 financial advisers, on average only 5% of financial advisers were subject to an AFCA complaint in the 2020/21 year.  In reality, some advisers would have received multiple complaints, and some complaints would relate to former advisers, so the total number of impacted advisers would be a lot less.

In the media release, AFCA highlighted the consumer results that they have achieved since commencement.  This is a notable amount of compensation that has been paid:

“AFCA has now helped to secure more than $610 million in compensation and refunds, and over $220 million in remediation payments, since starting operation on 1 November 2018.”

AFCA will publish an annual report later in the year, that will present more details on the complaints statistics.

Issued 14.07.2021. AFA Policy & Education Update

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