Chair’s message

While fewer breaches of the Code in certain areas was pleasing, increases related to responsible lending, complaints handling, and branch closures were of concern in this reporting period.

These obligations offer important protections for customers and, when breached, can have serious consequences.

This result shows again the need for banks to undertake further work. Improvements to systems and processes should be a focus as banks commit to fewer breaches and better outcomes for customers.

Pleasingly, we saw a reduction in breaches of obligations for joint accounts, direct debits and guaranteeing a loan.

In our last report, we highlighted risks with not acting on requests from vulnerable customers to change the authority on joint accounts. Control over accounts is critical for these customers and the obligations to act on such requests are fundamental to consumer protection. We welcome the improvement in compliance since the last report.

Improve compliance reporting

The data from Compliance Statements is a valuable source of information for banks and the public, so we are working hard to improve the data collection process and the way we report on the data.

In consultation with the ABA, we continue to make progress on introducing materiality thresholds for breach reporting, aligning our data classification categories with ASIC’s breach reporting, and finalising criteria for benchmarking.

These developments will improve the Compliance Statement processes for banks and improve the reports that we publish, producing better insights into risk areas for banks and consumers.

We look forward to finalising these initiatives in consultation with the ABA and the industry.

Ian Govey AM
Independent Chair
Banking Code Compliance Committee