The Albanese Government has formally authorised the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) to handle external disputes under the Scams Prevention Framework (SPF).
This authorisation enables AFCA to handle disputes across the banking, telecommunications and digital platform sectors under the SPF.
Access to dispute resolution gives consumers a clear pathway to seek redress where regulated entities fail to meet their SPF obligations and cause scam‑related harm or loss.
Where disputes cannot be resolved directly with businesses, consumers can escalate matters to AFCA as the independent external dispute resolution provider. This provides an alternative dispute resolution pathway to costly and time‑consuming legal processes.
The AFCA decision‑making will be guided by an assessment of SPF Code obligations and will also include consideration of whether entities had regard to internal dispute guidelines set out in the SPF rules.
Once operational, the SPF will provide a clear framework to support consistent and transparent AFCA determinations with the SPF taking priority over other applicable frameworks.
Over time, AFCA decisions will build a body of decisions against these benchmarks, further improving transparency and confidence in the dispute resolution system.
