The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) can consider a complaint you have about a life insurance or general insurance product.
This page outlines the types of complaints AFCA can consider about insurance products. It also tells you what to do next if you want to make a complaint to us.
Detailed information about the types of insurance products and issues we may consider, as well as complaints we can't consider, is also available.
Case Study
Small business?
There is specific information about business insurance on the Information for small businesses page.
Overview
Insurance includes the following:
- domestic insurance, such as home and contents or car insurance
- travel and ticket insurance
- pet insurance
- sickness and accident insurance
- strata title insurance
- medical indemnity insurance
- life insurance such as income protection as well as funeral, trauma, total and permanent disability (TPD), accidental death and endowment policies
- small business insurances including farm insurance.
We also consider warranties that are issued (and not merely administered) by financial firms that are AFCA members. Usually, this means the extended warranty is purchased separately from the retail good (such as fridges, TVs, and cars to which the warranty relates).
Detailed information about these different types of insurance products is available to help you decide if you want to complain to us.
AFCA does not consider private health insurance.
The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman (PHIO)
considers these complaints
AFCA does not consider complaints about workers compensation. The Fair Work Ombudsman provides more information about workers compensation issues
Issues and problems you can complain about
More information about these issues is available to help you decide if you want to complain to us.
- Insurance premiums that were incorrectly applied or calculated.
- Information that wasn’t disclosed about a product or was misleading or incorrect.
- Decisions your financial firm has made, such as denial of an insurance claim, the value of an assessed loss, or delays in making a decision.
- If you gave instructions and they weren’t followed.
- Privacy and confidentiality breaches.
- Where you dispute liability for a car accident or insurance excess.
- Denial of a travel insurance claim because of a pre-existing condition.
- Denial of a landlord insurance claim because the damage was not caused maliciously by the tenant.
What to do next
You can make a complaint to AFCA online, by letter, email or by phoning us.
If you don’t want to complain to us directly, you can go back to your financial firm and ask to make a complaint to their internal dispute resolution team.
Your financial firm should be able to provide you with information about how to make a complaint to them.
We also have some tips available to help you make an internal complaint.
