Regulators are warning mortgage brokers that they risk losing their authority to act as credit representatives if they fail to register their businesses with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.Banking Day understands that hundreds of members of the Credit and Investments Ombudsman scheme failed to register with AFCA before August 31.Australian credit representatives such as mortgage brokers were required to join the new financial complaints handling service before the end of August, but many have not filed applications almost two weeks after the expiry of the deadline.The CIO scheme has approximately 25,000 members drawn from different parts of the financial services sector including, non-bank lending, debt collection, mortgage broking and financial planning.It is a condition of ASIC authorisation of credit representatives that they formally participate in the new external dispute resolution service.Unregistered credit representatives will automatically relinquish their accreditation, an ASIC spokesperson confirmed to Banking Day."Failure to be an AFCA member will be a breach of their licence and for Australian credit representatives who are not a member, their authorisation will have no effect," the spokesperson said.An AFCA spokesperson confirmed that some CIO members had not yet registered with the new authority, even though a majority had made the transition."For those CIO members that have not yet transitioned their membership we are actively following them up to ensure they complete the transfer as soon as possible," the spokesperson said."We strongly encourage all such members to complete their transfer if they have not already done so."Holders of financial services licences have until 21 September to join AFCA.The AFCA spokesperson said the authority was cooperating with ASIC's monitoring of the membership transfer program. "We are providing regular updates to ASIC on the progress of AFCA membership arrangements, both in relation to the transfer of CIO members and entities that will be required to take out AFCA membership by 21 September. "This includes superannuation trustees."The Turnbull Government last year passed legislation to unify the three main external dispute resolution schemes in the financial services sector.The decision met with resistance from some industry groups, including the major banks, worried that its jurisdictional parameters exceed those of the current schemes.AFCA will take over handling consumer complaints from the CIO, the Financial Ombudsman Scheme and the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal on 1 November.