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ARTICLE · 16 NOVEMBER 2018

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) Rules – What you need to know

Kott Gunning
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This article summarises important aspects of the AFCA Rules, which should be read with the AFCA Operational Guidelines.

AustraliaFinance and Banking
Jonathan O'Connor (Formerly With Kott Gunning)
Jonathan O'Connor (Formerly With Kott Gunning)
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On 6 September 2018, we published an update explaining what the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) is and what you need to know about it. The AFCA Rules have since been released and have been in effect since 1 November 2018, which is when AFCA started receiving complaints from consumers.

The AFCA Rules consists of five sections. In this article, we summarise the important aspects of each section of the AFCA Rules.

SECTION A – COMPLAINT RESOLUTION PROCESSES

  • After a complaint has been lodged with AFCA, financial firms cannot initiate or continue legal proceedings or take any action to recover a debt, in relation to any aspect of the subject matter of the complaint, without AFCA's consent (Rule A.7).

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