Most common super advice complaints revealed
New data from the Australian Financial Complaints Authority has revealed the most cited complaints from clients of professionals whose primary business was superannuation advice for the second half of 2019.
In relation to financial firms whose primary business was that of a “superannuation fund trustee/adviser”, account administration accounted for 1,031 complaints (55.5 per cent), followed by group life insurance with 550 complaints (29.6 per cent), according to AFCA’s Data Cube.
Following that was death benefits distribution with 234 complaints (12.6 per cent), then pensions with 26 complaints (1.4 per cent) and non-trustee-related complaints accounting for the remaining 18 complaints.
Of the 18 non-trustee-related complaints, two related to managed investments, one related to derivatives/hedging securities and one related to life insurance.
AFCA chief operating officer Justin Untersteiner said making the data available to the public was an important step in increasing transparency.
“Every six months, AFCA releases data which allows Australians to see how many complaints their insurer, bank, financial adviser, superannuation fund or other financial firm has received and how they have responded to those complaints,” Mr Untersteiner said.
“Rebuilding trust in the Australian financial services will be a long journey and one that requires effort across the entire sector. Transparency is key in this transformation and we have made significant changes in the way we report our data and decisions to make them more accessible to the public.
“Our hope by releasing this data is that we see improvements and the industry takes action to reduce the number of complaints that end up at AFCA.”
Adrian Flores
Adrian Flores is the deputy editor of SMSF Adviser. Before that, he was the features editor for ifa (Independent Financial Adviser), InvestorDaily, Risk Adviser, Fintech Business and Adviser Innovation.
You can email Adrian at [email protected].
