Until this year, if your bank did everything right but the scammer's bank never questioned an obviously suspicious account, you had nowhere to take that specific complaint. That's changed.
What Actually Changed on 12 March 2026
Until this date, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) could only investigate a scam complaint against your own bank — the institution that sent your money. From 12 March 2026, AFCA's jurisdiction expanded to allow it to investigate the receiving bank — the institution where the scammer's account actually sat and received the stolen funds — even where you were never a customer of that receiving bank at all. AFCA can also now consider complaints about an account or credit facility opened in your own name by a scammer without your knowledge, and can join multiple banks to a single complaint to assess proportionate liability across the entire chain.
Why This Matters: Examining the Full Scam Journey
A "mule account" is a bank account used to receive and move stolen funds — sometimes opened by someone recruited by scammers, sometimes opened directly by a scammer using stolen identity documents. Before this change, a receiving bank had little direct accountability to the victim, even if it had ignored clear warning signs (a brand-new account suddenly receiving and immediately forwarding large sums, for instance). AFCA can now examine exactly that: whether the receiving bank had adequate systems to detect and act on suspicious account activity, and whether it intervened quickly enough once red flags appeared.
What This Means for a Complaint You Lodge Today
If you were scammed and want both your own bank and the receiving bank investigated, you generally need to lodge a complaint against each bank separately — AFCA doesn't automatically bundle them. You can complain about a receiving bank even if the scam itself happened before 12 March 2026, as long as your complaint meets AFCA's standard time limits and wasn't already excluded from AFCA's jurisdiction when you originally lodged it.
What This Means for You
- If you've been scammed via a bank transfer, you can now pursue both your own bank and the bank that received the funds — lodge separate complaints against each.
- This applies even to older scam events, provided you're still within AFCA's standard time limits for lodging a complaint.
- AFCA is free — you don't need a paid representative to lodge a complaint.
- This expanded jurisdiction is described as an interim step ahead of Australia's broader Scams Prevention Framework, which is expected to bring further changes.
Related Kibbo Tools
Sources
- Australian Financial Complaints Authority — Receiving banks and unauthorised opening of accounts. afca.org.au
- Dwyer Harris — AFCA's expanded scams jurisdiction and how it assesses liability. dwyerharris.com