The ombudsman’s complaints data for the 2019-20 financial year showed that AMP Financial Planning had the highest number of consumer complaints, with 122 complaints received by AFCA over the course of the year.
During the year to June 2020, AMPFP had 101 complaints referred to case management and 16 resolved at the initial registration and referral stage. The dealer group had 27 cases resolved in favour of the complainant, while 12 were resolved in favour of AMP and 20 were discontinued.
Commonwealth Financial Planning recorded the second highest number of complaints over the 2020 financial year, with 79 complaints received by AFCA and 56 progressed to case management. The industry fund-aligned State Super Financial Services had the third highest complaint numbers, with 59 complaints received and 47 progressed to case management.
Digital money management service MyBudget had the fourth highest complaint numbers according to AFCA data with 49 complaints received over the year, while Australian Planning Services, a boutique licensee that ceased its licence in mid-2019, was fifth highest with 45 complaints.
AMPFP, Commonwealth Financial Planning and State Super Financial Services have remained the top three advice groups for complaints since AFCA data began following the establishment of the new ombudsman in November 2018, while MyBudget and the ceased Australian Planning Services have recorded increased complaints over the past year.
AMP-aligned dealer group Charter dropped out of the top five for complaints over the 2020 financial year, as did the liquidated advice group MyPlanner.
Overall, financial advice businesses accounted for 590 complaints over the year, with 60 per cent of complaints relating to super, while 33 per cent related to managed investments.
There were almost 77,000 total complaints received by AFCA during the 2020 financial year, with most of these flowing from banks, general insurers and credit providers.
how about a table of complaints per adviser?
I understand AMP and CBA being so high as they’ve had a high proportion of advisers.
AFCA Datacube shows 100 complaints about Financial Advisors regarding Life Insurance. This equates to 0.13% of total complaints (76,880) to AFCA for the 12mths to 30/06/2020. 41 of these complaints were about Commonwealth Financial Planning & AMP. Resulting in only 0.076% of complaints against medium to small financial advisors.
The comment from David Locke, Chief Executive of AFCA:
“That’s fantastic, we’ve had more than enough complaints about banks and insurers and we’re very happy to get few complaints about financial planners…
“If only other sectors were like yourselves, then we wouldn’t have much business and one of my targets and KPIs is reduce numbers, not increase numbers.”
Leading to the obvious question – ASIC & LEGISTLATORS WHERE’S THE PROBLEM?
590 complaints for financial advice in 2020. Just for fun lets remove the top 5, AMP 122, CBA 79, State Super 59, My Budget 49 and AP Services 45. So 236 complaints REMAINING from over 20,000 advisers.
One complaint against advisers is one too many, however, the above numbers don’t justify the economic, financial and health burden being placed on financial planners (and clients) who are beholden to the behavior of all others in our industry, suffice to say, lucky for them planners are the ones to uphold the “best interests” of our clients.
MyBudget is a debt management facility, I don’t see why their numbers should even count in the financial planning numbers in the first place. They wouldn’t need an AR would they?
So, total AFCA complaints for 2020 that related to financial advice businesses equated to only .766% of the total number of complaints.
Not even 1% of the total number of complaints received and the industry is being over regulated out of existence!
The advice costs to the consumer are increasing significantly due to unworkable and duplicated compliance and regulatory requirements that are completely imbalanced compared to other similar industries.
There has been a determined and programmed bias toward financial advice that is not relative to the data presented here.
It is time the whole process of the significant impost levied against financial advice and advisers must be reconsidered to be workable, affordable, achievable and beneficial to the consumer.
Just saying 590 complaints out of 77000 regarding financial advice is around .766% of complaints. I feel we have borne more than .766% of the regulatory whip as opposed to our friends in banks, general insurance and credit providers. Some would almost say we are being discriminated against. This does not equate to the mental anguish the financial planning profession has been subject to the last few years. But then again we don’t donate to political parties or have any clout in Canberra, and we do make for a pretty easy picture, headline and vote grab in the paper. Great work by all the politicians and regulators on killing an industry with .766% complaint rate whilst supporting the other 99.23%. Thanks Scott, Thanks Josh, Thanks Kenneth.
590 from 77,000. And who is carrying the burden from the RC?