Claimo settles most insurance refunds within 4-8 weeks.
However, financial firms including banks and insurers are legally permitted to 45 days to provide a final response as part of their Internal Dispute Resolution (IDR) requirements. These requirements are enforced by Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) under Regulatory Guide 165: Licensing: Internal and external dispute resolution.
If the issue relates to a claim for financial hardship, the financial firm must provide a response within 21 days.
If you are unhappy with the outcome or final response provided by the financial firm, then you have the rights to refer the request to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) which is a free external dispute resolution (EDR) scheme.
The AFCA timeframes varies widely from just 3 weeks to 4 months depending on the size and complexity of the refund request, or the financial firm. As a rule of thumb, the bigger the size of the refund request, the longer you can expect to wait on getting a refund because the financial firm may try and make it difficult to claim for the simple reason of not wanting to pay-out.
In addition, AFCA is a non-for-profit and their service is free to use, therefore they often receive high volumes of cases, especially in uncertain times such as COVID 19, meaning timeframes can go longer than 6 months.
In some cases, where a consumer’s situation primarily involves Financial Difficulty and they can prove it, for example, with a Statement of Financial Position (SOFP) or bank statements, then AFCA may be able to escalate the case timeframe to ensure there is a quicker turnaround. These exceptions are subject to AFCA approval and a tailored process that is designed to help complainant and the financial firm to reach an agreement.