The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) says its new internal dispute resolution (IDR) reporting requirements will start with a group of 11 large financial firms that will, for the first time, have to report this data to the regulator by the end of February.

The rest of the 10,500 financial firms affected by the new regime must report IDR data for January-June 2023 to ASIC by the end of August next year, after which ASIC will make the data public.

"We will only begin publishing data received for those complaints received after January 1 2023,” ASIC said.

Since October, financial firms have been required to record all complaints received and have an effective system for recording information about complaints under Regulatory Guide 271.

ASIC Deputy Chair Karen Chester says the IDR data reporting framework is the culmination of many years of work with industry to improve and standardise IDR data.

“Updated standards and requirements for IDR will assist firms to identify and address systemic issues that arise from complaints,” Ms Chester said. “ASIC collecting and ultimately publishing system-wide IDR data is a consumer centric milestone.”

The data will give greater public visibility of where harms may be occurring across the financial system right down to individual firm level, she says, and elevate ASIC’s ability to be a data driven regulator.

"We all want to see consumers benefit when firms use this data to benchmark, even compete on, their IDR performance and to improve the way they respond to consumer complaints in practice.”

The 11 entities to report IDR data in the first tranche are the big four banks, TAL, Insignia Financial, AMP, Cbus, UniSuper, Retail Employees Superannuation Trust and AustralianSuper.