Tag: Banking Remuneration

Mortgage Brokers Are Essential To The Home Loan Industry

It has been interesting reading the media coverage of the recently released ASIC report. Some suggest brokers have been “slammed”, others suggest its  more a touch on the tiller in terms of commission models. Having read the ASIC report in full – more than 240 pages, I think there are three points worth making.

First, around half of mortgages are originated via the broker channel, it varies by lender of course, but consumers get more responsive assistance and access to industry knowledge via a broker, and our surveys indicate much higher satisfaction ratings than those going direct to a bank. Because brokers look across lenders, they should have access to a wider range of options, and (perhaps) better pricing. Different types of customers use brokers differently.  But there is a valid and important role for brokers.

Broker originated loans may be more “risky” but this is more to do with the types of consumers who choose to use them.

Second, the current commission models are complex and not transparent, especially as it relates to soft commissions, incentives and other elements. In addition, the ownership of brokers is unclear. As a result consumers cannot be sure they are getting unbiased advice, and it may be the ownership structures and commissions get in the way.  As ASIC says:

Remuneration and ownership structures can, however, inhibit the consumer and competition benefits that can be achieved by brokers.

ASIC also says:

Brokers almost universally receive commissions paid by the ‘supply side’ of the market (i.e. the lender or aggregator), rather than by the consumer. Our review identified significant variability and complexity in remuneration structures between industry participants. The common element across all remuneration structures for brokers, however, was a standard commission model made up of an upfront and a trail commission.

ASIC are not suggesting the removal of the commission model, but they are suggesting significant changes to it. There will be ongoing consultation on the nature of those changes. But I think the enhanced requirements for disclosure of ownership structures is as important. Transparency is good. Better transparency is better.

We did a piece on brokers on our video blog (in 2016) – in the Truth About Mortgage Brokers.

But third, there is something which continues to bug me. Financial Advisors have a requirement to provide “best interest” advice (see ASIC’s report today), whereas Brokers and Lenders dealing with often the largest transaction a household will undertake have a lower hurdle of “not unsuitable”. This bifurcation of the supervision regime makes no sense.

Both advisors and brokers should be clearly working in the best interest of the clients. So why not create a standard and unified regulatory framework, covering all product and financial advice?  Now, I understand ASIC has two departments, separately looking at financial advice and mortgage lending but this is not a good enough reason. Time to put all advice, whether for wealth or lending, under the same regime. Not least because investment property loans are actually about wealth building, and should be considered as part of a wealth management strategy.  One third of mortgages are for investors, and our research highlights investors are more likely to access brokers.

The requirement for transparency, quality of the advice, and consumer outcomes should be the same. Far fetched? No.

The Financial Markets Authority in New Zealand says:

Financial advisers are people who give advice about investing and other financial services and products as part of their job or business. They include financial planners, mortgage and insurance brokers and people working for insurance companies, banks and building societies that provide advice about money, financial products and investing.

They do not have this bifurcation.

All financial advisers must exercise the care, diligence and skill that a reasonable financial adviser would exercise in the same circumstances. In determining what a reasonable financial adviser would do, the following matters must be taken into account:

  • the nature and requirements of the financial adviser’s client or clients
  • the nature of the service and the circumstances in which it is provided
  • the type of financial adviser

See more in section 33 of the Financial Advisers Act 2008. See examples below of how these obligations apply to advice on insurance and credit products.

ASIC Review of Mortgage Broker Remuneration Released

The Treasury has released the ASIC review on mortgage broker remuneration, together with two info-graphics on the industry. The findings will shape the future of the mortgage industry, and are now open for consultation.

Importantly, ASIC says the standard model of upfront and trail commissions creates conflicts of interest.

There are two primary ways in which these conflicts may become evident. Firstly, a broker could recommend a loan that is larger than the consumer needs or can afford to maximise their commission payment. This may also involve recommending a particular product or strategy to maximise the amount that the consumer can borrow (e.g. through the choice of an interest-only loan). In this report, we have referred to this as a ‘product strategy conflict’. Alternatively, a broker could be incentivised to recommend a loan from a particular lender because the broker will receive a higher commission, even though that loan may not be the best loan for the consumer. We refer to this as a ‘lender choice conflict’.

ASIC has put forward six proposals to improve consumer outcomes and competition in the home loan market:
(a) changing the standard commission model to reduce the risk of poor consumer outcomes;
(b) moving away from bonus commissions and bonus payments, which increase the risk of poor consumer outcomes;
(c) moving away from soft dollar benefits, which increase the risk of poor consumer outcomes and can undermine competition;
(d) clearer disclosure of ownership structures within the home loan market to improve competition;
(e) establishing a new public reporting regime of consumer outcomes and competition in the home loan market; and
(f) improving the oversight of brokers by lenders and aggregators.
ASIC consider that these proposals should be implemented before a further review of the market is conducted in three to four years to determine whether additional changes are required.
They also propose to conduct a targeted review of the suitability of advice
provided by brokers (including through a shadow shopping exercise)
commencing in 2017.

Here is the Treasury release.

As part of the Government’s response to the Financial System Inquiry (FSI), Improving Australia’s Financial System 2015, the Government requested ASIC undertake an industry-wide review of mortgage broker remuneration.

The Review found that the current mortgage broker remuneration and ownership structures create conflicts of interest that may contribute to poor consumer outcomes.

The Review outlines a number of proposals for industry aimed at improving consumer outcomes, including:

  • improving the standard commission model for mortgage brokers;
  • moving away from bonus commissions and soft-dollar benefits;
  • increasing the disclosure of mortgage broker ownership structures; and
  • improving the oversight of mortgage brokers by lenders and aggregators.

The proposals outlined in this paper are intended to elicit specific and focused feedback, and should not be viewed as a statement of the Government’s final policy position.

The Government invites all interested parties to make a submission on the proposals outlined in this paper. Closing date for submissions: Friday, 30 June 2017

ASIC briefs O’Dwyer on remuneration review

From Australian Broker.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has briefed Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer about its broker remuneration review, suggesting a shift away from volume-based commissions and soft dollar incentives.

 

As reported by the Australian Financial Review, the regulator also recommended increased disclosure by banks with vertically integrated business models.

ASIC handed the report over to O’Dwyer on Wednesday (15 March).

The regulations are likely to eliminate volume-based incentives from the industry as they have the potential to encourage brokers to write more loans then necessary.

Soft incentives such as sponsorships, overseas trips and prestigious industry events for high end brokers will also be on the chopping block.

Despite these recommendations, AFR said that the ASIC report endorses the core commission-based remuneration system used by brokers.

Every Consumer of Financial Products Should Read This!

In a speech “The role of financial regulation in protecting consumers“, the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland highlights the abundant empirical and theoretical research to show that consumers do not always act in their own best interest in making financial decisions and that biases can be exacerbated by the design of financial products.

This is a very important issue, especially given the current debates about the role of banking, and the cultural behaviour of bankers. In a word, without appropriate regulation and protection, consumers are at a significant disadvantage. More needs to be done to empower consumers in their dealings with financial services firms.  International financial literacy studies indicate that a majority of the world population do not have sufficient knowledge to understand even basic financial products and fail to make effective decisions to manage their finances and the risk associated with them.

A vast empirical literature shows that consumers tend to make poor financial choices, taking on too much debt, misunderstanding investment risk and choosing financial products that do not match their needs. Over recent decades, the formal economic theory to rationalise these patterns has been developed, with insights from economics and psychology blended in the vibrant fields of behavioural economics and behavioural finance.

The fast pace of financial innovation has created a complex world for consumers, where the range of available financial products is broad, and the consequences of financial choices are significant. Coupled with this, the typical household tends to have a limited personal track record in making financial decisions, since the purchase of financial products happens only infrequently. This is problematic, since the demands for financial sophistication and knowledge are sizeable if a consumer is to navigate safely through the options put forward by providers of financial services. Financial decisions often require consumers to assess risk and uncertainty, for example, and to consider trade-offs between the near term and the long term. A growing body of academic literature shows that, among the general population, the level of financial knowledge, skills and ability to consider such complexities is low.

There is also a growing body of evidence from the field of behavioural economics that consumers are subject to behavioural biases when making decisions. In other words, decisions are affected by emotions and psychological experiences, by rules of thumb and accepted norms. For example, consumers can exhibit present-biased behaviour, which leads them to over-value payoffs today relative to payoffs in the future, a bias which can be associated with self-control problems.  In addition, households can be overly attached to the status quo and suffer inertia bias, taking default options in financial contracts, failing to switch product or provider even when there are clear benefits to switching.  Retail investors also tend to follow naïve investment strategies rather than identifying superior options.  Consumers can also exhibit loss aversion bias, meaning that they care more about potential losses than making equivalent gains.

The design of financial products and services can serve to ease or exacerbate these biases.  In this context, behavioural economics shows that framing matters – put simply, firms can present the same information in different ways and this can lead to different choices by consumers.  A key insight from the recent experience with financial crisis and from the growing literature on behavioural economics, is that consumers do not always act in their own best interest. In addition, market forces do not always act to reduce consumer mistakes. Firms face their own incentives when designing and framing products, and these incentives may not align with the best interests of the consumer. For example, analysis by the Office of Fair Trading in the UK shows that firms can frame prices in a way that plays on consumer biases. Empirical research also suggests that firms can choose to market the salient features of products that appeal to consumer biases, while shrouding the less favourable aspects that could alter a consumer’s choice to purchase that product. The interactions between misaligned incentives and behavioural biases can adversely affect consumer welfare, and there are many examples of analytical work that highlight such costs.

 

Aggregator slams ABA Review’s “ludicrous” broker findings

From Australian Broker.

There is a “significant risk” that the Australian Bankers’ Association (ABA) Retail Banking Remuneration Review will draw “false conclusions” on broker remuneration, according to the Australian Finance Group (AFG).

Managing director of AFG, Brett McKeon, said the review does not have the information gathering powers or resources required to include broker remuneration within its scope. Instead, it should cede this responsibility to the review currently being conducted by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC).

The ABA “should not risk reducing confidence in its findings by referring to, or basing recommendations on, isolated anecdotal statements,” he said in a letter to Stephen Sedgwick AO, who is heading up the review.

An example of how the Sedgwick review misses the point can be found in its recently released Issues Paper which highlighted the banking industry practice of increasing the commission rate of a mortgage product to increase its sales, he said.

McKeon added that this emphasis failed to consider the combination of incentives that a bank may offer brokers, the consumer benefits of brokers fulfilling their responsible lending obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (NCCP Act), and negative factors such as increased processing delays caused by these types of promotions.

“The suggestion that a broker will chase higher commission at the risk of recommending something unsuitable or risk clawback and damage their reputation and therefore their business for a few dollars more is ludicrous.”

“In fact, AFG has provided extensive empirical information to ASIC for the purposes of the ASIC Remuneration Review that indicates that there is no real correlation between the commission rate offered and the market share of a lender.”

McKeon also slammed the Sedgwick Issues Paper for alleging that “third-party mortgages are likely to be larger, paid off more slowly, and more likely to be interest only loans than those provided to equivalent customers who dealt directly with bank staff”.

“It is extremely disappointing that the above statement was included in the Issues Paper, albeit with the final acknowledge that the information that was considered is not conclusive,” he said.

Instead, it was important to note that the attributes of loans introduced to the banks through the broker channel directly relate to the attributes of customers who sought out the broker in the first place.

“For example, consumers seeking larger loans may seek the assistance of a broker in order to maximise potential savings.”

Finally, McKeon said there was a danger that the Sedgwick review could treat the roles, responsibilities and risks associated with mortgage brokers as equivalent to financial planners.

“It is important to remember that the government intentionally excluded mortgage brokers from the Future of Financial Advice reforms (FOFA),” he said.

“This approach recognises that the regulatory failures that the government sought to address with FOFA did not include residential mortgages and that mortgage brokers were already subject to an appropriate protective regulatory regime under the NCCP Act, including the responsible lending obligations.”

ABA Responds To Independent Retail Banking Commission Review

The ABA, in a media release has responded to the paper which has been released, and which questioned whether good customer outcomes and product commission payments were possible. It warned that the use of upfront and trailing commissions and their effect on incentivising sales may potentially lead to poor customer outcomes.

The Australian Bankers’ Association has today welcomed the release of Mr Stephen Sedgwick’s issues paper from his independent review into commissions and payments made to bank staff and third parties.

“Banks want to ensure that they pay their staff to do the right thing by customers, and we will work on any areas that need improving,” ABA Executive Director – Retail Policy Diane Tate said.

“This review is part of an industry-wide look at some of the influences on culture in banks, such as leadership and people and performance management.

“In recent years banks have made changes to remuneration practices to place more of an emphasis on good behaviour rather than sales targets, in light of changing community expectations and regulatory requirements; however there is more to do.

“It is important that banks get the balance right between rewarding employees and getting the best results for customers.

“Banks have committed to changing or removing payments that could lead to poor customer outcomes,” she said.

“Importantly, the issues paper has not identified systemic issues warranting the outright banning of product based payments. However, the paper does highlight the importance of culture, good governance, performance management systems, compliance checking, and communications across the organisation and by management, as all related to remuneration.

“The ABA looks forward to providing another submission to Mr Sedgwick to help complete his review. This is a complex area with mixed views so we encourage interested parties to have their say,” Ms Tate said.

In addition to reviewing payments for the selling of retail banking products like deposit accounts and mortgages, the Sedgwick Review will also comment on overarching principles on how banks pay and incentivise all executives and employees.

More information on the Sedgwick Review is available at retailbankingremreview.com.au.

As I recall the ABA were central to the establishment of the review in the first place, (mitigating the pressure for an independent financial services review) and perhaps they are surprised that the independent review is questioning commissions! We shall see.