The Finance Brokers Association of Australia (
FBAA) has met with the Minister for Small Business and Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer to discuss unfair clawbacks.
Backing up his promise made at the annual FBAA National Conference at the Gold Coast, chief executive officer Peter White spent Monday morning with O’Dwyer discussing the lack of fairness of commission clawbacks which continues to drive a wedge between brokers and lenders.
“The main point I bought up was in relation to unfair clawbacks, and I spoke to her from her position as small business minister, and how they are unreasonable and unfair and it has an impact on the broker community. For smaller groups it could actually wind up putting them into hardship provisions. It is completely unreasonable,” White told
Australian Broker.
“The minister isn’t going to make a direct comment on that but she has acknowledged it and she knows it is a top-end priority from my point of view and that from my end, there are a few different levels we are working on in regards to this because I am not letting go of it.”
While White couldn’t divulge to
Australian Broker what the FBAA’s complete plans were, he did say that the association is working on hosting a public industry forum to debate and discuss clawbacks.
“There are certain things we are doing which are very specific, which I cannot go into detail about yet. I do have a resolution for how this thing can all be resolved in the faith that I would like to see but there are certain steps that I need to progress and get finished first before I can talk about that publicly,” he said.
“What I can say is that I am working towards planning a forum on this. Depending on what I can achieve, I am working on something which I will be able to connect the whole industry too through technology. What I am trying to finalise is to hold a forum in a centralised location and then have it televised so [brokers] around the country can actually see the discussions that are happening. It will be with lenders, aggregators and brokers and I want it to happen sometime in the first quarter of next year.”
According to White, he is “significantly confident” that the industry will be able to come to a mutual understanding and resolution in regards to clawbacks.
“I am significantly confident that we will be able to solve this, regardless of what others are saying in the marketplace. There actually is a resolve to this and there is no reason why that resolve cannot be reached. It is a matter of the banks coming to the table to discuss it and I would rather not use other leverages to make that happen. Hopefully we can get a mutual agreement within the industry and resolve these clawback issues.
“The reality is that regardless of anything else, this is something that is truly unfair to the people affected by it. There is no other business in the country where this sort of thing happens.”
