Australian Credit Licensees are required to renew their Licence with ASIC every year via the Annual Compliance Certificate.
To meet the ongoing requirements of an Australian Credit Licence, licensees are required to have
- Written policies and procedures for each of the general conduct obligations (listed below)
- A systematic process of testing yourself against these policies
- Evidence that you are performing that testing, documenting the results and taking action to fix areas that were found to be non-compliant.
When Licensees submit their Annual Compliance Certificate, they are declaring they have the above.
These written policies, procedures and documented regular testing include the following obligations, not just Responsible Lending (known in the industry as checking files).
The "General Conduct Obligations" include:
- Arrangements for dealing with conflicts of interest
- Arrangements for ensuring compliance with the legislation
- Training and competence structures
- Being a member of an external disputes resolution scheme and having an adequate internal disputes resolution scheme (a complaints policy)
- Having adequate compensation arrangements
- Having adequate resources to provide services, including HR, IT and financial resources
- Having an adequate risk management system in place.
Credit industry participants need to have the above elements embedded in their businesses prior to being a Licensee.
Although these measures are being forced on the industry by ASIC, many of the requirements simply make good business sense and we urge all businesses to take this opportunity to add real value to their operations.
The easy solution for NCCP Compliance
QED CompliFast is a quarterly compliance program - it monitors different areas of your business each quarter, so it's not overwhelming!
QED CompliFast is fast and easy to use with just 4 simple steps:
- Education:Just download and read your quarterly information pack.
- Assessment: Complete your quarterly questionnaire as an overall assessment of your business.
- Feedback: Read your professional and personalised report with recommended corrective action plans.
- Easy Access: We keep your reports safe and secure. Access your reports at anytime through your secure login - handy if ASIC audits your business!
Australian Credit Licensing Assistance
If you want to have your own ACL, we have everything you need to assist you getting there. QED Risk Services can provide template policies that you can take and customise to your business; we can talk to you about your business and perform the customisation for you; or we can execute the complete implementation for you, train your staff in new procedures where necessary and provide methodology to ensure continuing compliance.
Similarly, lending network groups such as aggregators, choosing to allow brokers to be authorised as credit representatives of their licence will need to ensure all the above requirements are covered off right through their credit representative network. QED Risk Services can similarly assist with this process.
Finally, having submitted more Credit Licence applications than any other provider in the industry, QED is constantly engaged with ASIC at the grass-roots, operational level. QED constantly monitors the turnaround time ASIC takes to approve a Credit Licence and we keep you informed at every stage of the Credit Licensing process. QED knows each one of the Licensing analysts and their individual character traits. Through QED's assessment of ASIC's ever-evolving ACL process, it gets to identify trends that develop and, if required, can contact more senior managers at ASIC and ask specific questions - "We have noticed this trend - is that something that you think is becoming broader ASIC policy?" Where this does turn out to be the case, if it's noteworthy, QED will let its client base know in a timely manner.
Call us today on 1300 817 662 to talk about how we can help you.
