Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA)

They don't even investigate your complaint and rush you to accept the smallest amount of settlement possible especially if you are a person of colour. Never got any details of their "investigation", never got any support or options on what I could do next if I don't accept the settlement and they're run by the banks and insurance companies FOR the… Read more

banks and insurance companies. The government needs to step up and investigate AFCA themselves with an independent body that isn't funded by fat cats that run the financial industry and have enough from all of us money to sweep our problems under the carpet.

AFCA a brush off from banks .time wasters on major bank complaints .experts at verballing BOQ and AFCA now face closure by the ACCC . AFCA operate with criminal intent .BEWARE

The AFCA behaves like all Ombudsman globally - they back the organisation the complainants have grievances with - in my opinion from experience. I have submitted complaints with Ombudsmen in the UK and recently with the AFCA in Australia, regarding a complaint against the Commonwealth bank. The pat spiel they both spew out when delivering the… Read more

news that the complainant has not been successful is identical, so could even be derived from A.I. It's patronising at best and infuriating at worst. My case with the AFCA was drawn out and included me obtaining my case file via the FOI Act (Freedom of Information), to obtain phone recordings. Throughout the case the AFCA admitted that the bank could have been clearer disclosing information, but they also said that banks rarely admit when they have made mistakes. I was offered a bribe by the bank to close the case, which was a rare gesture apparently, but I refused, as this token would not have covered potential fees I would have incurred. The case came to a natural end as my term with the bank reached its end date, after which the AFCA finally admitted that the bank had indeed failed to disclose fees. This should have happened earlier - no excuses. They subsequently requested an apology from the bank. This was an insult so I refused the apology and demanded that the case stay open, as I did not want to add to their statistics of complaints closed, due to mutual settlement. However, the AFCA closed the case regardless. In my opinion it would be a complete waste of time for complainants to proceed with an AFCA case, in the hope they will settle the matter you have with a financial institution. It would be better to engage a solicitor, but if this option would be prohibitively expensive, perhaps seek council with Legal Aid; a Paralegal or a lawyer in training.

FAST! We had an issue with a service provider and within 24 hrs AFCA had contacted the provider - 5 stars for that! The provider contacted us almost immediatley (forgot to copy all the people so created an issue). We responded and the issue is not resolved. Soooo impressive to see the speed of action of AFCA. Congratulations to all the team.

Has a notoriously BAD name .in bed with the banks.not independent.elder abuse to the elderly who don't understand phone apps.will string you out to burn you off ..report to U.N.England your complaint Responsible banking 7 months later AFCA… Read more

rang.wanted more time. Verifies thoughts " bank run and verbalers burning off the the complainant. Should be bought before the ACCC.and fined heavily

These guys are an absolute JOKE!!!! Never has the saying been truer than "HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE" . AFCA is there to make like they are independent from the financial institutions that pay their wages and call their tunes. Before… Read more

complaining to AFCA please look at the website and see where most of their staff have come from!!! THE FINANCE INDUSTRY!!!!! SURPRISE SURPRISE. Maybe another banking royal commission is in order. Replace a government funded overseeing body with one that is funded by the industry that it polices!! THIS MUST BE A JOKE AS ARE THEIR "INDEPENDENT" OFFICERS.

In short dont waste your time.

Had a complaint re travel insurance which was going for 5 months so I complained to AFCA, got quick responses from them and the insurance company paid out the substantial claim with in a month.

I would like to sincerely thank AFCA for assisting me in resolving my complaint. When I first encountered the issue, I felt overwhelmed and uncertain about my rights. As an ordinary consumer, it can feel intimidating to challenge a financial provider. However, through AFCA’s process, I experienced fairness, structure, and accountability. The… Read more

system works.

Because there was an independent body reviewing the matter, the overcharged amount was returned to me. Without this pathway, I believe the outcome may have been very different. The existence of AFCA gives ordinary people confidence that they are not alone and that fairness is not just an ideal, but something practical and achievable.

I encourage anyone who feels powerless to seek help and to use the complaint system properly. It is there for a reason. Stand up respectfully, provide your evidence, and trust the process.

Thank you AFCA for providing a fair and balanced dispute resolution service. I respect the system, and I am grateful that it exists.

this institution claims to solve half cases at mediation level, which is a high ratio, so I filed a complaint at AFCA after ANZ bank refused to process a chargeback on a cancelled non refundable airline booking (reason code: service not rendered), and it worked, the 4th level of customer service of ANZ when contacted by the AFCA refunded the debit… Read more

at ANZ expense (the issue went through 3 levels of customer service before: transactions disputes, transactions disputes 2nd level when the airline challenged chargeback, customer service complaints), ANZ then did not seek to argue anymore, so I highly recommend AFCA, I wasn't optimistic with all the negative reviews here, I was worried this authority may not be independent from banks, any dissatisfied customer should try it, it is free and does not take much time to get an outcome

My experience with AFCA was honestly awful. The process dragged on for over a year and was completely draining. I spent months providing documents, evidence and detailed explanations, and by the end I was left wondering what the point of the whole process even was. The final outcome felt narrow, technical and completely disconnected from the… Read more

real issue. It felt like the financial firm was given the benefit of every technical argument, while I was expected to prove things that an ordinary person would never realistically have access to.

That is the part that frustrated me the most. AFCA presents itself as a place consumers can go when they have a dispute with a financial firm, but my experience did not feel like consumer protection. It felt like a long administrative process where the complainant does all the work, waits forever, and then gets told why the financial firm’s technical position wins.

For a complex investment complaint, I found the process slow, exhausting and ultimately useless. It may look fair and formal from the outside, but that is not how it felt going through it.

Based on my experience, I would be very careful before relying on AFCA for anything serious involving a financial firm. I went in hoping for a fair review. I came out feeling like the process offered very little practical protection at all.

This entire process wit the AFCA has been an absolute waste of time. It took them 4 months to advise they could not proceed based on simple qualifying criteria that could have been advised for the outset. All they have served to do is further protect an Australian Based Finance Company, who has held $250,000 of our company funds for over 20 months without refunding it as promised on numerous occasions.

They claim to be independent but have the bank's best interests in mind. my case i raised with the bank is now aproaching 18mths and i dont even get answers to question anymore, they just dodge them. Shocking people to deal with. the same old MPMW type (max pay, min work) that is so common these days. i wish there was a lower score than 1 star

A "free and fair" dispute service? Don't believe it for a second If you are counting on AFCA to give you a genuinely independent hearing against an insurer, read this first. I brought a straightforward loss of rent claim. I submitted evidence, which included statutory evidence that over rides the insurer’s PDS. (Notice to quit, premises… Read more

uninhabitable due to water ingress). I submitted documentation. I set out exactly how the policy applied. And AFCA still sided with Hutch (Strata Insurance) and declined the claim, without, ever really understanding a single thing I put in front of them. That is the part that makes my blood boil. It is one thing to lose. It is another thing entirely to lose and be handed "reasoning" that reads like it was reverse-engineered to justify the insurer's position. The facts were ignored. The documentation was ignored. The policy wording was treated as an afterthought. Whatever "independent assessment" is supposed to mean, this was certainly not it. AFCA markets itself as the fair, free alternative to the courts, the body that exists so that ordinary people can be heard to get justice. In my experience it is nothing of the sort. It is a process that claims to be impartial whilst delivering outcomes that conveniently support the insurer. Definitely, do not feed the hand that bites you. The "free" part is real. The "fair" part is marketing. And while we're talking about marketing, actually READ the five-star reviews on here. Read them slowly. Notice how many are vague, glowing, and free of the specific detail. We need to ask ourselves yourself who benefits from the generic praise sitting on top of every genuine complaint. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how the five-star average came to exist. Once you've read enough of them, you may have yours too. To anyone walking into this process, be warned. Document everything, keep every email, every date. Assume nothing you submit will be given the weight it deserves, because in my case it wasn't. A well-resourced insurer walked away validated, and a legitimate claimant walked away with a result that does not reflect the evidence. AFCA had one job, to be the impartial umpire, and it sided with the insurer. Either engage a solicitor or go to XCAT after the determination has been declined and challenge your insurer there. You will have greater success. The system is a shambles as are the employees within AFCA.

AFCA was one of the most frustrating and disheartening experiences I have ever been through. More than a year of delays, endless bureaucracy, generic responses, and absolutely no genuine concern for the human being behind the case. While my life was collapsing financially and emotionally, AFCA moved at a painfully slow pace with zero urgency. I… Read more

lost my income, my apartment became uninhabitable, my savings disappeared, yet none of that seemed to matter. Everything felt designed to protect insurance companies and hide behind technical wording instead of delivering real fairness. AFCA claims to be an independent authority for consumers, but my experience was that ordinary people are left powerless while large corporations with lawyers and resources are protected at every step. The entire process felt cold, mechanical, and completely detached from reality. By the end, I honestly felt less like a person seeking help and more like a file being processed through a system that has no empathy and no accountability. An incredibly disappointing and exhausting experience.

AFCA says it’s independent authority, but in reality they work for bank. I my case they even don’t talk about the core concern of my complaint and give it in banks favour.

When I asked for help to have banks change their rules so they can't just close customers' accounts in order to have us do what they command, I was told that is not the role of AFCA, that I can only act on my own behalf and that I should take the $500 offered to me for a nice dinner out instead. After closing this complaint because I am not… Read more

interested in money, I want action, I have found out that AFCA is funded by the financial institutions they are meant to be impartial to. How is this fair for customers? Where do we go to be heard? I am disgusted by the unethical practice of companies, especially in the financial industry. What a parasitic, sad game to play with human lives. We need to do better than this.

I went to AFCA wholeheartedly, hoping to get a fair assessment of my disagreement with my bank. It turned out that AFCA completely ignored my argument and sided with the bank. AFCA, in fact, is nowhere near what it claims to be. My experience demonstrated that AFCA is not an independent organisation, but a puppet of the bank. Fairness is not exhibited in the organisation.

An organisation clearly bought and paid for by the financial institutions. My experience showed the organisation had no interest in the real issue and were there to cover for the banks.

I am total disgusted & disappointed with the outcome from them looking into a complaint about RAC Insurance. I have waisted about a year with them looking into my complaint (supposedly) for the outcome to be the same. I have photographs of the water staining on the ceiling etc & they said that wasn’t enough proof. Take my advice & don’t waste your… Read more

time & running around to get quotes for this that & something else & in the end the say not we won’t be getting any compensation for that & to bad about the fact that you have been putting up with this. We have had 1/2 a room of ceiling & 1/2 of a room of carpet that the insurance company had cut out in our lounge room & it is all bad luck but the insurance won’t be covering it. In the end you just get worn down & they win I am seriously think whether I would have house insurance again,maybe take my chances & if you have storm damage you can replace everything with the money you save with not paying insurance policy costs. We had insurance with the same company for 11 years & 1 other small claim but that means nothing, they just don’t want to payout at all but definitely aren’t backward in taking your money & AFCA back them. IT IS A LEGAL SCAM. I was dealing with [Name Removed] & from my experience I think that AFCA is a total waste of tax payers money.

Useless. A waste of about 5 or 6 months. Not fit for purpose. "Financial" in AFCA connotes money, arithmetic etc. They refused to do sums, or basic arithmetic - instead batting back to the complainant with useless verbiage. They grope for a technicality to refuse to consider the complaint using sums/arithmetic. If a 5% disparity in published Unit… Read more

Price for the day - is in the opposite direction to the rest of the market - if that is not sufficient for them to consider - what about a 25% disparity ? Note with a spread of 40 global stocks - it is not possible that the combined result of the 40 stocks would give a result multiples worse than the relevant indices - thereby indicating fraud, especially when no stock comprises more than 5% of the holdings of the Unit Trust. The unit trust provider provided just a single outlier stock for that day, which would not explain the the significant drop for the 40. I was dissatisfied with the service of [Name Removed], [Name Removed] and [Name Removed] of AFCA. I note the overall score from reviewers of AFCA is 1.5*( 1.5 star)- very low, considering a reviewer can't score less than 1* This review is in the interests of Public Service cc ASIC & Minister for Finance

Gave them 1 star only because I can't give lower. They should change their acronym to IDGAF because that's basically what they said after about 8 months. They are beholden to the Insurer who in this case was Budget Direct why were just as arrogant and ignorant than AFCA themselves. Do not bother with AFCA. Go straight to the courts or better yet -… Read more

go to the media. Authority Groups and Insurance companies like these need to be held accountable. They clearly are not impartial. You only need look at the reviews here.

these useless ****s are even more useless and corrupt as the utterly corrupt to the core banking system is in the first place that these shower of morons are supposed to protect us from. It is cosplay of democracy. Gave 1 star because there was not an option for sub zero

Repeatedly, the same pattern occurs with the AFCA team, and it’s clear that government agencies have no interest in addressing this terrible service. This doesn't surprise me because the underlying issue isn’t the person or people involved but the dark and cheater-like behaviour embedded in the AFCA process. I am here to prove my point that AFCA… Read more

in no way supports racism or discrimination against anyone. Unfortunately, I deal directly with this kind of behaviour, which is why I stand firm in my conviction. I want to see if there is an honest person within AFCA, and I am willing to find out. I will not give up on seeking the right path and a fair resolution for those affected by AFCA’s misleading statements, bias, and abuse of power—closing cases without facts, making it harder to understand the real issues. It’s shameful that every complaint I make is sent to the junk mail department, ignored by AFCA staff. This is a terrible way to handle complaints.

They are useless and more often than not will side with the financial company (in my experience it was PayPal over a PayPal Pay in 4 payment that was charged twice and money that they owed me. Finally got a response from PayPal today that said my balance is clear, so they don't owe me and according to their records they didn't double charge me… Read more

even though my bank statement shows they did. You can't use PayPal or Pay in 4 if your PayPal balance is in debit, so why wouldn't you clear it? Either their Administration, Financial and Investigation teams are useless or they're liars (probably a reason why companies like Amazon and smaller businesses don't like or use them)). You're better off not bothering to use them and just consider your financial dispute as a loss because nobody stands up for the little guy, you just have to wait for a major stuff up of theirs to happen. If you ask me the best Ombudsman or any financial help is the Telecommunications Ombudsman because Telcos seem to be scared of them.