The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has launched an online tool to make it easier for consumers to see how financial institutions handle complaints.
Designed to increase transparency and consumer education, AFCA’s Datacube includes information about the number of complaints received, how long it takes each financial firm to resolve complaints and the number of times firms fail to respond to complaints.
It also allows people to compare financial institutions.
Chief Executive of AFCA and Chief Ombudsman, David Locke said Datacube provided a much deeper level of detail about the issues and products consumers and small businesses were complaining about.
“Anyone can use this tool to review the performance of their financial firm and compare it to others in the market,” Mr Locke said.
“This data, and the level of detail that consumers can see about each firm, will also support the work of policy-makers and researchers.
“For financial firms themselves, they can clearly see how they are tracking at handling complaints and how this compares to others in the market.”
He said all Ombudsman Schemes were required to publish data on the complaints they handled and AFCA was no different.
“This tool presents AFCA’s data in a way that is more accessible and easier to understand and interrogate,” Mr Locke said.
“AFCA will be rolling out many data and feature enhancements over the coming months.”
He said the Datacube contained AFCA’s data between 1 November 2018 and 30 June 2019 and is to be updated every six months.
More information about the Datacube can be accessed at this PS News link.
