In order to ensure fair treatment, you are required to adopt an internal policy for the processing of complaints and settlement of disputes relating to a distributed product or service. Ideally, your policy contains the following sections:

Purpose of the policy

The purpose of the policy is to ensure fair and free processing of complaints. Specifically, it provides a framework for receiving complaints, sending  acknowledgments of receipt and notices to complainants, creating complaint records, sending records to the AMF at the request of complainants, and submitting complaint reports to the AMF.

Contact information of the complaints officer

This person applies the policy and acts as official respondent with the AMF and the complainant.

Definition of a complaint

What is a complaint?

On receipt of a complaint

• Send an acknowledgment of receipt and notice to the complainant;
• Open a separate record for each complaint;
• Send the complaint record to the AMF at the complainant's request.

Contents of a complaint record

A record must be created for each complaint and include all documents relating to the complaint.

Description of your complaint process

Describe your complaint  process and give a reasoned written response.

Transferring a complaint record to the AMF

A complainant who is not satisfied with the business’s final position or the way the complaint has been handled may request that you transfer the record to the AMF.

The transferred record must contain all the documents related to the complaint.

Complaint reporting obligation

The person responsible for applying the policy must create and maintain a register of all complaints received. This register can facilitate submission of the complaint report to the AMF.

You must receive your clients’ complaints and process them in an impartial manner.

Create a record for each complaint processed

Create a record for each complaint processed. This record will be the one sent to the AMF, at the complainant’s request.

The record must contain:

• The complaint and all documents sent by the complainant
• Your analysis of the complaint
• Any information related to the complaint
• Your written final response with the reasons for it

On receipt of the complaint, you must send an acknowledgment of receipt and a notice to the complainant.

The acknowledgment of receipt

The acknowledgment of receipt must contain:

• The name of the complaints officer
• How long the complainant can expect it to take to process the complaint
• The notice to the complainant

Notice to the complainant

The purpose of this notice is to inform the complainant of the following:

• If the complainant is not satisfied with the final position obtained or the way the complaint has been handled, the complainant may at any time, ask you to transfer the complaint record to the AMF
• Following the transfer, the AMF will examine the record and will, if it deems it appropriate, offer dispute resolution services
• For the complainant, the transfer of the complaint to the AMF does not interrupt the prescription period for civil remedies

To assist you in preparing these documents, see the sample Acknowledgment of receipt including notice (pdf - 30 KB)This link will open in a new windowUpdated on September 10, 2012Exemple: Acknowledgment of receipt.

You must agree to a request by a complainant to have the complaint record transferred to the AMF if the complainant is not satisfied with the final position or the way the complaint has been handled.

The complainant may make the request using the Form to Request the Transfer of a File to the AMF (pdf - 52 KB)This link will open in a new windowUpdated on April 5, 2017Form to request the transfer of a file to the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) or in any other manner.

The AMF will examine the record and, if necessary, ask you for more information or documents.

After examining the record, the AMF will, if it deems it appropriate, offer its dispute resolution services.

Since November 7, 2022, you must enter your data using the new “Complaint reporting” section. To access it, you must use AMF E-Services for businesses.

In order to reduce the compliance burden, there will now be only one complaint reporting period, namely March 1 to May 1, for complaints received between January 1 and December 31 of the previous year.

Reporting date reminder

In keeping with its push to reduce administrative and regulatory burden, the AMF expects independent representatives and firms with only one representative to file a report in accordance with the established procedures only if they have complaints to report. The AMF will presume that an independent representative or firm that has only one representative does not have any complaints to report if they do not file a complaint report.