Dispute resolution

Internal dispute resolution
Internal dispute resolution data reporting
External dispute resolution
Notifying ASIC of changes to your AFCA membership
Dispute resolution and consumers
More information

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.

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