The tool works by providing consumers with an open and visual comparative report about financial complaints in Australia. Datacube’s dashboard gives users the opportunity to search for any registered financial firm and provides them with information about the number of complaints received about said financial firm, as well as how long it takes each to resolve complaints and the number of times it didn’t respond to a complaint. 

“This tool — the AFCA Datacube — provides a much-deeper level of detail about the issues and products that consumers and small businesses are complaining to us about,” said AFCA chief executive and chief ombudsman David Locke.

“Anyone can use this tool to review the performance of their financial firm and compare it to others in the market. This data, and the level of detail that consumers can see about each firm, will also support the work of policymakers and researchers. For financial firms themselves, they can clearly see how they are tracking at handling complaints and how this compares to others in the market.

“All ombudsman schemes are required to publish data on the complaints that they handle, and AFCA is no different. This tool though presents AFCA’s data in a way that is more accessible and easier to understand and interrogate. AFCA will be rolling out many data and feature enhancements over the coming months.”

Mr Locke noted the Datacube contains AFCA’s data between 1 November 2019 and 30 June 2019 and will be updated every six months.

“We are committed to working with consumers, small business and industry to resolve and reduce financial disputes through innovative solutions, education and communication initiatives such as these,” he added.

“We want to allow both consumers and our members access to the most recent data possible and are working to release the next update to this tool in January 2020.”