MFAA advocacy update – October 2023

Over the past quarter, our advocacy activities have included a combination of in-person meetings with Government representatives, small business advocacy groups and submissions to various consultation papers. As always, our objective is to shape meaningful, impactful and positive change for you, our members, and your clients.

In-person meetings

In addition to our quarterly meetings with AFCA and ASIC, the past month saw our CEO, Anja Pannek, in the halls of Canberra meeting with, among others:

• Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones (pictured above with MFAA CEO Anja Pannek)
• Dr Daniel Mulino, Chair of the Standing Committee on Economics, the Office of the Treasurer
• Bruce Bilson, Ombudsman at the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO)
• Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA).

Sharing insights on our industry on key matters such as the competition brokers bring to the lending landscape, payroll tax and a fairer, more equitable model for clawbacks were the aims at these meetings with key stakeholders.

Our latest submissions

Our consultations and submissions primarily focussed on two areas:

• AFCA’s approach to how it considers responsible lending or small business lending complaints, with the aim to resolve disputes more efficiently and effectively.

  While the MFAA supports AFCA having an approach document, we noted the approaches must strike the right balance between maintaining access to credit for consumers and small businesses and providing access to fair and accessible dispute resolution.

  Read our submission
  

• Consumer Data Right (CDR), or Open Banking, as the Government continues to evolve this regime to ensure it is fit for purpose.

  In addition to proposed changes to the CDR (Open banking) to make it both easier for consumers to access, as well as to expand it into non-bank lending data, the Government has signalled that it intends to regulate the use of screen-scraping (a technology that is used to power products such as Bankstatements.com and Cashdeck).

  The MFAA supports regulation in this space once the CDR becomes an effective replacement, however as we’ve highlighted in many submissions recently, the industry is in the very early stages of transitioning to CDR.

Recent regulatory changes

It’s great to also see positive change happen as a result of how we represent your voice in MFAA’s submissions.

For example, the MFAA were one of the stakeholders that ASIC consulted on changes recently announced around licensee’s obligations for reportable situations.

This change will help alleviate the burden of breach reporting for large licensees (which includes many aggregators), freeing up their compliance teams to spend more time in providing support to their broker members.

This change took effect 20 October 2023.

If you want to learn more on this, MFAA members can check out our Reportable Situations (formerly Breach Reporting) module in the MFAA Learning Hub.

We’d love to hear from you

Fixed rate wave

The mortgage cliff has been much talked about in the media over the year.

We know many brokers to have helped their clients prepare and achieve a soft landing.

We’re keen to hear your stories! What are the techniques or tools you’ve used to help your clients coming off a low fixed rate term and what have the results been?

Send us an email at ua.moc.aafm@ycilop

Credit reporting

The Australian Retail Credit Association (ARCA) is reviewing the Credit Report Code, with submissions due 16 November 2023.

We would love to hear your feedback on credit reporting, what is working, what is not working and how credit reporting can be improved for the benefit of your clients.

Please send us an email at ua.moc.aafm@ycilop