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The reported rise in fraudulent recruitment applications has turned political after the federal opposition accused the government of worsening the problem.
Recruitment agent Floyd Nangreave revealed last week that he had never seen so many examples of candidates forging police or credit checks to qualify for industry roles.
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Shadow Minister for Financial Services Bernie Ripoll, who played an important role in designing the previous government’s Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, said anecdotal evidence suggested that candidate fraud is a growing problem across financial services industries.
“If someone is prepared to fraudulently fake a police check, they are more than likely to do other things as well, including being dishonest with people,” he said.
Mr Ripoll said Labor had legislated to raise standards and protect consumers with FOFA – but that those reforms were now being “watered down, dismantled or pulled apart” by the present government.
That is “completely at odds” with issues in the financial services industry, including the issue of candidate fraud, he told The Adviser.
“So it doesn’t surprise me that there is more activity in that area of people fraudulently representing themselves or if we see more problems arising out of the financial services sector.”
However, Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann hit back at Mr Ripoll, saying that the changes the government had made to FOFA had made the industry more transparent.
“The suggestion that any reported rise in fraudulent recruitment applications in the mortgage broking and financial services industries is as a result of the government’s changes to the FOFA laws is completely false and deliberately misleading,” Mr Cormann said.
“The government’s changes to the FOFA laws do not impact mortgage brokers. Nor do the government’s changes to the FOFA laws affect the way people may choose to represent themselves during a recruitment process.”
