The chief executive of the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA), Richard Gilbert, has praised the effectiveness of Australia’s financial services regulatory regime, pointing to the relatively low number of complaints being received compared to the system operating in the UK.
In a speech given to the annual general meeting of the Finance Industry Complaints Service (FICS) in Sydney, Gilbert said Australians didn’t seem to be complaining as much about their investment experiences as their counterparts in the UK.
“In fact, complaints to FICS in 2003 ranged from the high 500s, and by December 2005, had dropped away to the high 400s, with complaints about financial planners dropping markedly,” he said.
Gilbert said the Australian Superannuation Complaints Tribunal had similarly seen a decline in the level of complaints, from 1,300 complaints in 2003 to 1,100 in 2005.
“This, to me, suggests that for consumers under FSR [Financial Services Reform], the system in Australia is working,” he said.
Gilbert said this needed to be compared with complaints to the British Financial Ombudsman Service between 2003 and 2005, which he said was “like looking at the torque curve on a Ferrari”.
“The line goes pretty much straight up — and almost as fast as a Ferrari. While resisting the temptation to joke about ‘whinging Poms’, a leap from just over 40,000 complaints in 2003 to 100,000 per year in 2005 suggests British consumers are not completely happy under their regulatory regime.”
Gilbert said that, unfortunately, the Westpoint failure would see FICS numbers spike, and that over 60 per cent of investors in Westpoint appeared to be self-managed superannuation funds.
