The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has released details about the most-complained superannuation issues in the past year with claim handling delays taking the top spot.
In an AFCA member webinar, lead ombudsman for super, Heather Gray said the authority had received over 5,000 complaints in the field of superannuation.
This was in contrast to advisers, where AFCA received under 1,250 complaints.
Claims handling was complained about by 856 people, followed by denial of claims and service quality which were both complained about by 517 people each.
Most complaints were resolved at either the registration or case management stage and 64% were resolved by agreement of in favour of the complainant. However, the average time was 116 days with only 34% being closed within 60 days.
Account administration errors and incorrect fees or costs were the final two categories with 487 and 419 complaints respectively.
“We are unable to deal with complaints about fees being too high,” Gray said. “But we can help if you have been incorrectly charged.”
The most common product to receive a complaint was a person’s superannuation account with over 2,700 complaints followed by total and permanent disability insurance (TPD), income protection, death benefit and pension.
Some $38.6 million was paid out in compensation through AFCA.
For complaints to be processed quicker, Gray suggested that people should use meaningful filenames on documents, use bookmarks to separate documents, convert messages to PDF files, group similar documents together and use an index.
This would enable case workers to more accurately find and read the relevant documentation for the case.
