The Australian Bankers Association has renewed support for "a one-stop-shop approach that would simplify the process" of external dispute resolution.In a submission following the interim report by Ian Ramsay from his recent review into the system, the ABA supported "an overarching gatekeeper which directs people where to go to progress their complaint."In early December the Ramsay-led review panel recommended that the three established schemes should be merged into one. As a first step the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit & Investments Ombudsman would be merged.The Superannuation Complaints Tribunal would be transformed from a statutory scheme into an industry scheme along similar lines to FOS and CIO. The panel said consideration should then be given to further integrating the schemes to create a single scheme.The panel rejected the idea of establishing a judicial tribunal, which had been floated by the Prime Minister and was recommended by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics in a recent report.The ABA yesterday said external dispute resolution was "an important alternative to the courts, and to meet its purpose it should be easy for consumers to know where to go to get their problem resolved. We can strengthen the current system by having a single path for people to take their complaints initially, rather than multiple paths."The ABA also said it supported lifting the value of disputes open to review to A$1 million, and backed compensation awards also up to $1 million.But the industry association also set out a definition "small business" that may be the subject of debate.A business is "not a small business", under the ABA's definition, if the number of employees is 20 people or more, annual business turnover is $5 million or more, or the size of a loan for business purposes is $3 million or more, or the total credit exposure of the business group, including related entities, to all credit providers is $3 to $5 million or more.