Among the relatively small number of complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority in 2019/20 that went all the way through the process to an adjudication by the ombudsman, about three-quarters of the rulings went in favour of the financial institution.

But there were some noteworthy exceptions.

AMP Financial Planning, Rams, MasterCard Prepaid and Panthera Finance all had more adjudications go the way of the complainant.

In its first full financial year of operation the ombudsman received 76,880 complaints, of which 39,014 progressed to case management.

Of the 4854 complaints that went on to the adjudication stage, 72 per cent of AFCA determinations were in favour of the financial firm.

However, of 39 complaints against AMP Financial Planning that went to a determination, 27 were resolved in favour of the complainant.

Of 37 complaints against Rams that went to a determination, 22 were resolved in favour of the complainant.

Of 21 complaints against Mastercard Prepaid that went to determination, 12 were resolved in favour of the complainant.

Of 27 complaints against Panthera Finance that went to determination, 14 were resolved in favour of the complainant.

Of the 48 complaints about Commonwealth Insurance that went to a determination, 24 were resolved in favour of the complainant.

And of 26 complaints against Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance that went to determination, 12 were resolved in favour of the complainant.

More than a third of all complaints received (36.6 per cent) were about banks and another 12.6 per cent were about credit providers. Commonwealth Bank was the subject of 6582 complaints – the largest number of complaints about any institution.

The other big banks featured prominently. Among smaller financial institutions, Citigroup, Latitude, American Express and PayPal were also prominent.

Of the complaints that progressed to case management, credit cards, housing finance, deposit taking and payments, and consumer loans were the most common product types involved.

During the pandemic period (March to August), there were big spikes in complaints about travel insurance and superannuation (due to delays in processing early release payments).

AFCA chief executive David Locke said: “With so many travel plans impacted it was inevitable that there would be a big increase in travel insurance claims as well as disputes about chargeback requests on credit cards.”

Locke said it was challenging for super funds to process such a high number of requests in a short period of time.