To kick off the new financial year, we have three compliance-related updates and some useful resources to help you stay compliant.
Mortgage Prisoner Refinance Policy
Our Compliance team recently issued a new Mortgage Prisoner Refinance Policy, which aims to enable brokers to assist clients to refinance to cheaper interest rates where they meet the criteria of a mortgage prisoner. Based on broker feedback, they have made several updates to include term extensions and loan increases up to $50,000.
Useful resources
The updated policy and supporting tools on Help
Launch Webinar: The Mortgage Prisoner Webinar
Update Webinar: Broker Insights Webinar
AFCA Renewal
AFCA recently issued a communication to all licensee and credit representatives members advising of the changes to their membership portal. The new portal will change the way licensee and credit representatives can join and renew their AFCA membership.
AFG will not be bulk renewing all AFG Credit Representative Memberships on behalf of its Credit Representatives. AFG Credit representatives will be required to renew their AFCA membership/s direct with AFCA in 2023. AFCA has also advised they will be sending out renewal notices to all licensee and credit representative members in June to enable them to complete their renewal and obtain their certificates in the AFCA portal by the 31 July 2023 expiry date.
All queries about AFCA’s fees, billing, certificates, and renewal should be referred to the AFCA Membership team – Ph: 1300 56 55 62 or email membership@afca.org.au
Unlicensed Introducers
Earlier this year, ANZ was penalised $10 million by the Federal Court in relation to its Home Loan Introducer Program (Introducer Program). The Introducer Program involved home loan referrals to ANZ from third parties, including cleaners and real estate agents.
The penalty relates to 50 home loan applications lodged between March 2017 and March 2018 ($200,000 penalty per application). The Court found that ANZ contravened consumer credit protection laws by accepting information and documents (including pay slips and copies of ID documents) from unlicenced third parties who were not licensed to engage in credit activity – when it should have only accepted names and contact details of the customers.
This case follows NAB’s $15 million penalty for dealing with unlicenced home loan introducers in October 2020.
Both of these actions re-emphasise the need for all brokers to ensure that their referrer arrangements comply with the NCCP requirements, which extends to making sure that you are only accepting the names and contact details of customers from referral parties.
More information on Help about referrer requirements and NCCP.
Remember we’re here to help
If you have any questions about your compliance requirements or any of the updates in this article, please reach out to your Partnership Manager or contact the AFG Compliance Team by emailing compliance@afgonline.com.au.
