The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has published a report on work to ensure its approach to fairness is well understood and is applied consistently and independently.

The Fairness Jurisdiction Project outcomes report marks the conclusion of a process conducted to assist staff, members and complainants, AFCA says on its website today.

“We recognise that fairness as a concept means different things to different people,” Deputy Chief Ombudsman June Smith says.

“AFCA’s project did not set out to define what is fair or unfair in the provision of financial services or create new standards of conduct for financial services firms. AFCA’s role is to apply the law, codes of practice and regulatory guidance in place at the time the conduct complained about occurred.”

The project articulated how parties should engage with each other and AFCA to ensure a fair process, explained its approach to delivering fair outcomes and designed systems to calculate and capture fair outcomes once achieved.

Work has included development of a decision template to clearly explain how AFCA has applied the fairness tests in complaint handling and why decisions made are fair in all the circumstances.

An apprehended bias policy ensures AFCA’s people remain impartial when working with parties to resolve complaints, while a fairness jurisdiction tool aims to ensure AFCA can discuss important issues for resolution with the parties in plain English.

Looking ahead, work will include providing greater clarity about AFCA’s role to assist parties during the process, including the accessibility of services, and clarifying its jurisdiction in relation to sophisticated investors.

“AFCA’s rules describe a jurisdiction which requires AFCA to do what is fair in all the circumstances, in the handling and determination of complaints,” Dr Smith says. “This includes delivering a fair process and fair outcomes for all parties to a complaint.”

More information is available here.