Financial advice: Dispute resolution

Financial firms* must have a dispute resolution system that consists of:

internal dispute resolution (IDR) procedures that meet the standards or requirements made or approved by ASIC; and
membership of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).

*ASIC Regulatory Guide 267 Oversight of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (RG 267) sets out who must have a dispute resolution system and which financial firms must be members of AFCA.

For more information, see:

Regulatory Guide 267 Oversight of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (RG 267); and
Regulatory Guide 271 Internal dispute resolution (RG 271).

Internal dispute resolution (IDR)

Regulatory Guide 271 Internal dispute resolution (RG 271) sets out how financial firms that are required to comply with IDR requirements can meet their obligations. The requirements relate to matters such as how firms must record and respond to complaints, and the timeframes for doing so.

Internal dispute resolution data reporting

Most financial firms with IDR obligations under RG 271 will also need to report IDR data to ASIC.

External dispute resolution (EDR)

Regulatory Guide 267 Oversight of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (RG 267) sets out which financial firms must be members of AFCA and how ASIC will perform its oversight role in relation to AFCA.

AFCA is a single dispute resolution scheme for financial services and commenced operations on 1 November 2018. AFCA can resolve complaints that a financial firm could not resolve at IDR.

AFCA replaced three predecessor schemes: the Financial Ombudsman Service Limited (FOS), the Credit and Investments Ombudsman (CIO) and the statutory Superannuation Complaints Tribunal (SCT).

AFCA can consider complaints about:

Notifying ASIC of changes to your AFCA membership

You must inform ASIC in writing about changes to your AFCA membership.

This includes circumstances where:

you fail to renew your AFCA membership,
you no longer require AFCA membership; or
AFCA has terminated your membership of the scheme.

More about your ongoing AFS obligations

Dispute resolution and consumers

Information about dispute resolution for consumers is on our consumer website Moneysmart.

Australian financial services (AFS) licensees have obligations to compensate consumers who have suffered from non-compliant financial advice. For more information, see:

Regulatory Guide 126 Compensation and insurance arrangements for AFS licensees (RG 126)
Regulatory Guide 256 Client review and remediation conducted by advice licensees (RG 256)
Information Sheet 232 Fees for no service: Remediation (INFO 232)
Regulatory Guide 277 Consumer remediation (RG 277)
Making it right: How to run a consumer-centred remediation

ASIC