At the ten year anniversary of the dispute resolution scheme FSCL, CEO Susan Taylor, told Good Returns that the growing number of complaints is a good indicator of the robustness of the industry.

Taylor said that a 36% increase in complaints over the past financial year demonstrates the need for financial service dispute resolution.

While some of the complaints were Covid related Taylor says, “We were well up on complaints going into 2020 across all financial services. I think that this is just a key example of a growing awareness from consumers that they are aware that they can go to a dispute resolution scheme if they have an unresolved complaint.

“I also think that our scheme members are getting better at recognising complaints and referring people to us if they aren’t able to solve the matter themselves.”

Since its inception, FSCL has dealt with more than 30,000 complaints and enquiries about financial service providers, resolved more than 1,988 disputes and awarded over $6 million in compensation.

Total enquiries for the 2019/2020 financial year peaked at 3,422, or an average of 13 complaints a day.

“We hope the sharp increase over the past financial year reflects both our consumer outreach work and our scheme participants more readily referring clients who have unresolved complaints to FSCL,” said Taylor.

However, the organisation’s role is broader than just investigating and resolving complaints.

“The different functions come with being a more mature scheme. While our core function is to investigate and resolve complaints, an increasingly important element of our role is sharing lessons that we have learnt from complaints with our scheme members and also with consumers.”

This change from investigator to educator has seen the FSCL being asked to do more training, webinars and presentations over the years. A role that Taylor says “is all about raising standards in the financial services industry. But also about helping our scheme members strengthen their internal complaints process.

“With a backlog of successful caseloads we are now being seen as experts in the work we do. We are very happy to share that expertise with the wider community, because if we can prevent complaints arising in the first place that is good for everybody.”

The FSCL currently has over 7,000 participant members. Guided by the approval criteria of independence, fairness, efficiency, effectiveness, accessibility and accountability.

Following the impacts of Covid-19, Taylor says that FSCL expects to see more complaints as the various government financial relief packages end over Christmas.

However Taylor says that “an increase in complaints is not a threat. Rather, it is a fantastic opportunity to gain valuable customer insights, raise customer satisfaction, and focus on business improvement.”

Taylor said that in her over 25 years’ experience in dispute resolution, she had seen first-hand how beneficial alternative dispute resolution can be and the value that can be added to a business by effective complaints handling.

“Well-handled complaints reinforce public confidence in the financial systems we all rely on.”