Tonight, Australians will pause to hear Treasurer Jim Chalmers deliver a Federal Budget shaped by cost-of-living pressure, supply chain fragility and a population stretched thin. But at the Claims Leaders Summit in Sydney today, the country's insurance claims chiefs are wrestling with a strikingly similar set of forces — only the stakes for brokers and their clients are arriving claim by claim, complaint by complaint.
Setting the tone was the opening keynote this morning from Deborah Jenkins, chief customer officer at the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). She laid out fresh data showing the dispute resolution system is creaking under unprecedented strain. In the first three months of 2026, AFCA logged more than 30,000 complaints across all financial products, putting the year on track for a record 120,000 — up from 100,000 last year. Claims-related complaints alone jumped 38% on the same period last year, a record surge that Jenkins said reflects "a system under sustained stress."
Her message to the room of insurers, brokers and service providers was unequivocal: the industry is not failing, but it is being tested as never before — and the fundamentals are what will decide who comes through it with their customers' trust intact.
Jenkins was careful to frame the numbers without pointing fingers. "In my view, this isn't a story about declining standards," she told delegates, rejecting the idea that firms had disengaged from customers or stopped caring. Rather, she said, the data tells the story of a sector absorbing shocks from every direction — natural disasters, supply chain disruption, regulatory scrutiny and consumers who are themselves under acute financial and emotional pressure.
The top three issues driving complaints, Jenkins said, will be painfully familiar to anyone working a claims desk: delays, denials and disputes about claim amounts. Delay complaints alone are up 28% this year, and Jenkins warned that supply chain headwinds — from plastic pipes to specialist labour — will keep that pressure on. "Delays feel different when someone is already under financial or emotional strain," she said, a line that landed with quiet force in a room that knows exactly how quickly a stalled repair can become a formal complaint.
The hailstorms that recently tore through Sydney, and a year in which insurers fielded close to 3,000 complaints from extreme weather events — almost six times the previous year — have only amplified the load. Yet Jenkins noted that significant event complaints reaching AFCA still represent a small fraction of overall claims being managed, a fact she attributed to the sector's preparation and customer-focused processes.
If there was a refrain Jenkins wanted brokers and insurers to take back to their teams, it was this: in a pressured market, the basics matter more, not less. She has rebuilt AFCA's own service around four fundamentals — timeliness, communication, transparency and closing the loop — a discipline she summarised as "doing the basics brilliantly."
Jenkins drew a sharp line between unavoidable delays — overseas parts, labour shortages, global transport — and avoidable ones caused by missed follow-ups, weak contractor oversight and failures to act. The first, she said, the industry cannot control. The second, it must. "In many cases, the delay is unavoidable, but the escalation to us is not," Jenkins said, pinpointing what she sees as the single biggest opportunity for brokers and insurers to take pressure out of the system.
That distinction matters commercially as well as reputationally. Avoidable delays, Jenkins noted, are the complaints most likely to escalate quickly and where AFCA may consider non-financial loss compensation — a cost that lands squarely on insurers and, indirectly, on the brokers who placed the cover.
There is a more encouraging signal buried in the data, too. Around 45% of claims complaints sent back to insurers are resolved through their own internal dispute resolution processes without AFCA needing to make a determination, and resolutions this year have been on average 19 days faster than last. As Jenkins put it: "Nineteen days may not sound like much, but if you're a person waiting for your complaint to be resolved, 19 days faster makes a huge difference."
For brokers, the takeaways reiterate the need for clear communication, realistic timeframes and active oversight of contractors and supply chains are no longer back-office hygiene — they are the front line of customer retention in a year when consumer patience is at a historic low.
Jenkins closed on a note of cautious optimism that resonated against the Budget-night backdrop. The pressures, she conceded, are real and will remain part of the landscape for some time. But she pointed to a striking data point: by the end of April, AFCA had received just seven complaints relating to the Middle East conflict — a figure she said that "speaks volumes about how quickly and effectively risks are being identified, communicated, and managed." However, the insurance industry’s challenges ahead are formidable; but, as Treasurer Chalmers will likely echo tonight, so too is the capacity of a well-prepared system to absorb them.
