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Super complaints on the decline
There were over 5,000 complaints related to superannuation received by the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) in FY21 with AustralianSuper receiving the most individual complaints.
Data from AFCA’s report for the 2020/21 financial year found there were 5,249 complaints related to superannuation. This was out of a total of 70,510 overall complaints received by AFCA.
However, it was a 31% decline from FY20 when there were 7,556 complaints received about super.
Half of these (50.07%) related to account administration, 38.7% related to group life insurance, 10.4% related to death benefits distribution and 0.75% related to pensions.
Complaints by product type
Source: AFCA
When it was broken down by complaints about super fund trustees or advisers, 57.4% related to complaints about account administration, 29.3% were about group life insurance, 11.8% were about death benefit distribution and 1.3% were related to a different matter.
AFCA said 100% of complaints in these areas were progressed to the next stage.
Percentage of complaints progressed per product group
Source: AFCA
When it came to individual funds, Australian Super received the most complaints (604), which was significantly higher than the second firm, REST (339). However, data from FY20 showed AustralianSuper received 1,123 complaints so this was a strong decline.
AustralianSuper was one of Australia’s largest super funds with over two million members and $191 billion in funds under management.
This was followed by Nulis Nominees, NM Superannuation Propertiary, Hostplus, HESTA, United Super and Aware Super making up the top firms.
Of the AustralianSuper complaints which reached the final stage, 102 were resolved in favour of AustralianSuper, 17 were resolved in favour of the complainant and 240 were resolved by agreement.
Super funds with most complaints during FY21
Source: AFCA
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
Laura Dew is editor at Super Review. Prior to joining SR, she spent five years working at Investment Week in the UK covering asset and wealth management.
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