Complaints are frequently more than isolated incidents: They can provide financial services providers with important insights about vulnerabilities, structural deficiencies and potential risks in their business models and internal processes. An effective, transparent complaints management function not only increases customer protection, but also supports pinpointing and remediation of potentially problematic areas.
In the latest edition of “Let’s talk about supervision” (“Reden wir über Aufsicht”), its publication series for supervised entities, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) mentions that the complaints-handling procedure constitutes a central component of conduct rules for more or less all of the financial services providers supervised by the FMA.
The FMA’s Conduct Supervision has conducted a cross-sector analysis about financial services providers’ complaints-handling procedures and has identified issues requiring particular attention in practical implementation. Inadequate procedures may lead to systemically problematic areas remain undetected – with resulting reputational risks as well as risks of potentially breaching obligations under supervisory law.
The FMA’s expectations:
- Clear definitions and boundaries: Financial services providers must clearly define what constitutes a complaint in their internal guidelines, clearly differentiating complaints from queries or other enquiries.
- Easily accessible information: It must be possible for customers to find information about the complaints procedure easily without needing prior knowledge – e.g. via websites or in smartphone apps.
- Objective processing and clear deadlines: Complaints must be responded to promptly within the applicable deadlines; conflicts of interest must be avoided when handling complaints.
- Analysis and internal embedding: Problems of a systemic or repetitive nature are required to be analysed, documented and remediated using suitable measures; internal guidelines must be drawn up in a coherent, complete and institution-specific manner.
This edition and previous editions of “Let’s talk about supervision” can be found on the FMA website.
Journalists may address further enquiries to
Boris Gröndahl (FMA Media Spokesperson)
Telephone: +43/(1)249/59-6010
Mobile: +43 676 8824 9995
E-Mail: [email protected]