New complaints handling standards could cost financial services providers millions if they need to adapt their systems and hire staff in order to comply, the Financial Industry Complaints Service (FICS) has warned.
FICS says eight key aspects of the new international complaints handling standards, which replace the Australian ones, need more defining so they do not overly burden financial services licensees with excess compliance.
The new requirements state that financial services licensees need to offer formal training to all staff that come into contact with customers in complaints handling.
Licensees also need to set up a formal system of tracking complaints, train senior managers in certain processes and offer a toll free number to consumers.
For large institutional licensees with thousands of employees, the requirements could cost millions in extra resources, FICS national relations officer Trevor Slater said.
"A lot of our bigger members say that's too onerous; we can't do that," Slater said.
He said one of FICS larger members has told FICS that implementing the technology to comply with the standards in every one of its branches would cost millions of dollars.
Slater said although the new document is written clearly, smaller members would find the extra detail and prescription daunting.
Slater said the regulator also needed to help licensees understand how to comply with the standards and not breach the rules.
"The difficulty we have is that ASIC has not been totally clear about their interpretation of the standards," he said.
FICS is negotiating with Standards Australia and members to achieve a workable interpretation of the standards and is offering access to members at a discounted rate.
