Commercial property insurance was among the top five products that small businesses complained about last financial year, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) says.

AFCA last week released details on small businesses in dispute with financial service providers across all sectors within its mandate, with 3490 complaints lodged, down 3% from the previous year.

About 1440 small business complaints related to loans, while the top 5 most commonly complained about products also included business transaction accounts (800 complaints), commercial property insurance (276) business credit cards (201), and loss-of-profits or business interruption insurance (200).

The top five small business issues were service quality (389), failure to respond to a request for assistance (282), interpretation of product terms and conditions (271), denial of an insurance claim (204) and default listings (198).

Around 36% of the complaints that small businesses escalated to AFCA were resolved at the earliest stage of its process, when a complaint is referred back to the financial firm for further consideration.

An AFCA member forum last week also heard that pricing reviews prompted by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have helped drive an increase in self-reported significant breaches of the general insurance code of practice

The number of significant breaches jumped to 223 last financial year from 131, a presentation to the forum showed.

“One of the factors driving this increase is a review being undertaken by ASIC,” Code Compliance and Operations Manager Joanna Ifield said. “In October last year ASIC called on general insurers to review their pricing systems and controls as a matter of priority to ensure customers get the full discounts they are promised.”

Over the past year the Code Governance Committee, which is supported by a secretariat within AFCA, opened a total of 169 new investigation case files overall and closed 152 matters. It opened 115 new significant breach files and closed 102.

AFCA figures show that general insurance complaints rose about 10% last fiscal year to 18,563, while more than 72,000 complaints were received overall.