Do I have to finish IDR before I can lodge with AFCA?

Usually you start with the firm. If the firm does not give an IDR response in time, you can generally lodge with AFCA once that timeframe has expired. AFCA can also accept some complaints earlier. Check the current AFCA Rules rather than a remembered version of this sentence if a deadline is close.

Can AFCA cancel my loan or award any amount I name?

AFCA is not a court and it is not a wish list. It can require a firm to do things the rules allow — compensation up to published limits, corrected records, a contract variation in some National Credit Code matters, an apology. It cannot invent a remedy the firm could never have provided. Read the determination’s scope, not the press release.

How long do I have after the bank’s final letter?

For most non-superannuation complaints, AFCA expects you to lodge within two years of the written IDR response, and also applies an outer limit of six years from when you first became aware, or should have become aware, of the loss — whichever comes first. Hardship contract-variation complaints have their own, slightly different, pair of dates. Confirm against AFCA’s current section B.4.

Complaints, IDR and AFCA — Credit Made Simple

A credit complaint in Australia is a two-room process. The first room is internal dispute resolution. ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 271 tells licensees what counts as a complaint, how fast they must acknowledge it, what a written IDR response must contain, and how many calendar days they have. The second room is the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, the ombudsman scheme licensed credit firms must join. It is free for consumers. It is not a court, not a regulator, and not a second customer-service team.

People lose these processes by treating them as conversations. They are files. The contract, the statements, the default notice, the hardship request and the call log you kept are the difference between a determination and a polite dismissal.

This is general information. It is not a prediction of what AFCA will do with any particular dispute. Credit Made Simple is not a credit licensee and does not lodge complaints for readers.

What counts as a complaint

RG 271 uses a wide definition. An expression of dissatisfaction, about a product or service, that you expect to be resolved is enough. You do not need the word “complaint.” You do not need their form, though the form will move the file faster. A hardship notice is a statutory notice under the National Credit Code; once you are unhappy with how it was handled, you are also in IDR. ASIC and legal-aid material treat a hardship request as a species of IDR for that reason. Write it so that a later case officer can see both: the Code request, and the dissatisfaction.

Send it in a way you can prove. Email to the published complaints address, a secure message that generates a receipt, or a letter. If you only ring, follow with a short written note: date, account, what is wrong, what you want. “I want this reviewed” is a complaint. “You people are hopeless” is a complaint too, but a weaker one, because it does not tell the firm which decision to reopen.

Licensees must acknowledge promptly. ASIC’s expectation is within one business day, or as soon as practicable. Acknowledgement is not a decision. The decision is the IDR response.

The IDR clocks

For most complaints, the firm has thirty calendar days from receipt to give a written IDR response. The clock is a calendar clock. Day one is the day after receipt. Superannuation has its own rules; this piece is about credit.

Some credit complaints run on twenty-one calendar days. RG 271 shortens the timeframe where the complaint is about a default notice, a hardship notice, or a request to postpone enforcement. That is deliberate. A thirty-day IDR sitting on top of a thirty-day default notice is how a borrower runs out of time. If your letter is about those documents, say so in the first line.

There are exceptions for complexity, for information the firm cannot obtain, and for complaints that become something else part-way through. If the firm wants more time, it should tell you why, when it expects to finish, and that you can go to AFCA now. Silence at day twenty-two or day thirty-one is itself a fact. You do not have to wait forever for a letter that is not coming.

An IDR response, when they refuse you or only partly agree, must give the outcome, the reasons, and AFCA’s contact details. Reasons means enough for you to decide whether to escalate: the issues, the findings on material facts, the information they relied on. A one-line “we have reviewed your account and our decision stands” is the sort of response AFCA is used to seeing, and it is not what RG 271 describes.

If the firm agrees with you, get the remedy in writing. A promised fee reversal that never posts is a new complaint, not a personality clash.

AFCA’s jurisdiction, and what it is not

AFCA hears complaints about member firms. Australian credit licensees must be members, and so must their credit representatives. From mid-2025, buy now pay later providers inside the Credit Act have to be members too. If the trader is not a member and is not required to be one, AFCA will not invent jurisdiction. Unlicensed operators are an ASIC problem, sometimes a police problem.

The scheme can look at maladministration in lending, the handling of hardship variations, collections conduct, disputed fees, privacy and credit-reporting issues that sit with the firm, and a long list of other finance disputes. It has published monetary limits. Check the current tables.

AFCA cannot jail anyone, rewrite the National Credit Code, or order a non-member to pay. What it can do, if the complaint is in jurisdiction and the facts support it, is bind the firm to a determination if you accept it. Compensation, a corrected listing, a variation of a regulated contract, a change of collections path, a refund of a fee — those are the ordinary remedies. You can reject a determination and go to court. The firm cannot reject it if you accept it. That asymmetry is the point of an ombudsman.

Time limits live in section B.4 of the AFCA Rules and the Operational Guidelines. For most complaints that are not superannuation, the practical pair is: lodge within six years of when you first became aware, or should reasonably have become aware, of the loss; and, if you already have a written IDR response, lodge within two years of that response. Whichever comes first. AFCA can extend in special circumstances. It does not have to.

National Credit Code contract-variation complaints — the hardship and related variation files — use a different pair: generally two years after the written IDR response, or two years after the contract ends, whichever is later. If your complaint is “they refused to change the contract,” do not apply the ordinary six-year-and-two-year shorthand without reading that paragraph again.

Lodging usually pauses the member firm’s recovery on the disputed account while AFCA has the file. It is not an automatic stay of a sheriff already at the door, and it is not advice to ignore a court date. If a claim has been filed, tell AFCA and get legal help on the court clock. The two systems do not always wait for each other as neatly as a flowchart suggests.

What an ombudsman can do with a credit file

AFCA case officers ask for documents before they ask for feelings: the contract, statements, notices, hardship correspondence, the IDR letter, and a timeline. They may ask the firm for the assessment it made when the credit was written, which is how responsible-lending arguments enter a complaint. Give them what you have. Do not drown them in every collector SMS if the issue is one incorrect default.

A hypothetical, labelled as such. A borrower seeks a three-month reduction after a job loss, provides payslips, and is refused with a one-line IDR letter on day forty. AFCA can look at the section 72 clocks, the reasons, and whether a variation should now be made. The same borrower asking AFCA to wipe the loan because the rate feels high is a weaker complaint unless there is a statutory or contractual hook.

Credit-reporting disputes sometimes belong here and sometimes at the bureau and the OAIC. If the firm listed a default that did not meet the Privacy Act and Credit Reporting Code conditions, AFCA can deal with the firm. If the bureau will not correct a file the firm has already acknowledged is wrong, privacy and credit-reporting rights is the companion path. Licensed intermediaries can be respondents too. A broker’s file is not the lender’s file. Name the helper as well as the provider if the assistance was the problem.

Gather a file of letters and statements

Start a single folder, paper or electronic, the day the account sours. Put in it:

the contract, the schedule, and any variation letters
twelve months of statements, or more if the dispute is older
every default notice, section 6Q notice, and “we intend to list” letter
hardship requests and the firm’s decisions
IDR acknowledgements and the IDR response
a log of calls: date, time, name, what was said
payment receipts and dishonour notices
any court or tribunal documents, unread if necessary, but kept

Do not tidy the file by deleting the angry emails you sent. They are part of the timeline. Do not tidy it by omitting the payment you missed. AFCA will see the statements.

If the first fourteen days after a missed payment are still in front of you, read when you cannot pay a loan before you lodge a grand complaint about a single dishonour. IDR is not a substitute for telling the provider you cannot pay. It is the next room when they mishandle that information.

A financial counsellor on 1800 007 007 can help you sort which problems are hardship, which are IDR, and which are already a legal claim. Community legal centres sit in the last of those rooms. This journal sits in none of them. We can tell you what RG 271 and the AFCA Rules say. We cannot run the complaint.

Use the scheme while it still has time

Ombudsman schemes fail in two boring ways. People never lodge, because the IDR letter sounded final. And people lodge years late, waiting for the firm to become reasonable. Ask for the IDR response. If it does not arrive, lodge. If it arrives and it is wrong, lodge inside the two years. If the complaint is a hardship variation, use that time limit.

AFCA will close files that are really court matters, or really about a non-member, or really about a feeling that the rate should have been lower. That is jurisdiction. A tight complaint about a missed section 72 deadline, an unlawful listing, or a collections threat that breached the guidance is the file the scheme was built for. Attach the letters. Leave the slogans off the form. A folder of letters is how an ombudsman that cannot see your kitchen table is supposed to see the account.