The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has launched a new digital platform to help financial firms manage disputes that reach the Ombudsman service better.
Chief Executive Officer and Chief Ombudsman of the AFCA, David Locke said the new AFCA Member Benchmarking Dashboard was an interactive platform that provided near real-time complaints data, updated daily, and gave individual firms a greater understanding of their complaints, including how quickly they were being resolved.
Mr Locke said the Dashboard also enabled firms to compare their performance against an anonymised set of similar financial firms.
“The Dashboard is a significant milestone and will ultimately help financial firms reduce customer complaints,” he said.
“Using the new Dashboard, AFCA members can investigate the types of complaints they receive, how well they respond to disputes, and how their performance compares to other firms in their industry.
“By providing members with greater data and insights, we hope to help financial firms improve customer service and minimise disputes.”
The Chief Ombudsman said the AFCA had an important role to play, not just in handling complaints that were escalated to the Ombudsman service, but also in improving industry practice.
“As an external dispute resolution provider, AFCA’s primary role is to resolve complaints,” he said.
“However, we also have a responsibility to encourage best practice, so firms receive fewer complaints in the first place.”
Mr Locke said the new tool was only available to member firms, but the AFCA provided insights into complaints through its free and public AFCA Datacube, which was updated twice a year.
