The insurance industry has the highest number of virus-related disputes, accounting for 38% of the 4773 cases lodged against financial services providers since March, when the pandemic was declared.

Credit was a close second at 36%, followed by superannuation on 16%, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) says in a statistics report for the 2019/20 financial year.

Of the 1813 virus-related general insurance claims received so far, more than 1500 are about travel insurance.

AFCA says about 56% of all virus-related complaints had been closed as at June 30.

For the 2019/20 year, consumers lodged 80,546 complaints against financial services companies, with credit products dominating at 43%, followed by general insurance on 24%.

AFCA says the overall disputes received represented a 13.7% rise in monthly complaints from the previous financial year. About $258.6 million was secured in compensation and refunds to consumers.

For general insurers, delays in claims-handling drew the highest complaints (3521), followed by claim amount (3171), denial of claim based on exclusion or condition (3032), denial of claim (2337) and service quality (1353).

The Financial Rights Legal Centre says the AFCA statistics, especially the ones on travel, mirror the cases it has been handling since the pandemic erupted.

“We too have had an abundance of calls regarding problems arising out of travel insurance claims, refunds and credit,” Policy and Advocacy Officer Drew MacRae told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “Travel insurance made up 78% of COVID-19 related calls to our Insurance Law Service.

“We have also seen COVID-19 compounding issues faced by those experiencing insurance problems from the Black Summer fires and other catastrophes that occurred earlier this year.”

In a separate statement, AFCA announced it has banned for-profit third party representative MCR Partners from lodging complaints on behalf of consumers and small businesses. The Melbourne-based accounting company’s website says it is “dedicated to helping individuals and small business in financial hardship”.

“It is important that consumers know they do not need to pay someone to lodge a complaint with AFCA,” CEO David Locke said. “We are an independent ombudsman service, and we are free to consumers.”

It is the first time that AFCA has exercised its powers to ban a “third party paid representative”. The 15-month ban came into effect on June 26.