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Mortgage broker complaints made up just 0.1 per cent of financial complaints in the financial year 2024, according to AFCA’s Datacube.
The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has completed its latest update of the AFCA Datacube, which makes data on complaints publicly accessible to consumers and financial firms.
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While AFCA had already revealed it received a record 105,000 in 2023–24, it has now released information on the most complained about companies (those who received four or more complaints from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024).
According to the Datacube, there were 98,630 complaints lodged against these companies in FY24 – with 41,585 of these made about banks – the largest financial firm type complained about over the year (and largely relating to deposits or payment systems).
Over the year, there were 3,380 complaints about home loans, with the big four banks receiving the largest volume.
Mortgage broking complaints
However, only a tiny proportion of financial complaints covered by AFCA Datacube was about those in the mortgage broking industry – around 0.1 per cent.
There were four companies whose “primary business is mortgage broking” that received complaints in FY24: Lendi Group*, Connective, Mortgage Choice, and Balmain NB Commercial Mortgage Limited (actually a non-bank commercial loan manager).
These companies received 38 complaints.
None of the complaints lodged against these reached the formal assessment or final determination phase.
The majority (32) were closed at case management. Of these, 13 were resolved by agreement, nine were discontinued, five were found in favour of the financial firm, and three were outside of AFCA rules. Just two of the 32 were resolved in favour of the complainant.
Aggregator complaints
Aggregators also received complaints over the year (72 in total), with Connective, Finsure, AFG, outsource Financial, Loan Market, My Local Broker, and Astute Financial Management receiving complaints (in order of volume).
Again, a large proportion was either resolved at referral, found to be outside AFCA rules, or discontinued.
Of the 54 aggregator complaints that progressed to case management, just three were resolved in favour of the complainant.
Finance broking complaints
There was a larger volume of complaints made against finance broking companies, with a total of 151 complaints made against companies whose “primary business” is finance broking. However, several of these appear to be erroneously categorised.
For example, the ‘finance broking’ firm with the largest volume of complaints was Smartsalary (72 complaints received), which is actually a salary packaging business, as is LeasePLus (which received five complaints). Meanwhile, two were lenders (Scottish Pacific and Granite Finance).
The mortgage broking industry has made up less than 1 per cent of all financial complaints since AFCA began publishing these figures (FY19) and come despite AFCA seeing a record year of complaints over the year to June 2024.
Speaking to The Adviser, Peter White AM, managing director of the Finance Brokers Association of Australasia commented: “This re-enforces the great work brokers do for consumers across the country, and although all complaints must be taken with greatest of seriousness, this low level of complaints shows the diligence and professionalism of our industry.”
However, he added that brokers should be cautious of becoming “complacent”.
“Extremely low levels of ombudsman complaints and ASIC’s non-progression of auditing BID files are extraordinarily positive outcomes, but with high market share comes a greater spotlight so lets all keep focused on how we go about our file due diligences and the professionalism we display,” White told The Adviser.
$313m in compensation and refunds
As previously announced, AFCA complainants secured $313,903,256 million in compensation and refunds.
The complaints body said that it resolved 104,203 complaints in FY24, 21 per cent more than in FY23.
The majority of complaints were closed before they reached the final determination stage, with 72 per cent of these resolved by agreement or in favour of the complainant. Only 2 per cent of the complaints closed before determinations were found in favour of the financial firm.
However, of the 4,281 complaints that did proceed through to final determinations, just 30 per cent were found in favour of the complainant.
AFCA said: “Despite a less dramatic increase than the previous year’s 34 per cent surge, we are still very concerned about the continued high numbers of complaints coming to AFCA.
“AFCA’s services should be reserved for intractable disputes that cannot be resolved between the parties, rather than us handling high volumes of issues around delay and poor service, which financial firms should be resolving themselves.”
*Lendi Group was also identified as a ‘mortgage originator’ in Datacube, with 33 complaints lodged against it in this category.
[Related: AFCA complaints hit new record in FY24]
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