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The wealth giant has joined the ranks of the big four banks by requiring brokers to adopt a borrower interview guide when writing loans to the bank.
Earlier this year, the big four banks released a new interview guide for use by brokers when introducing loans to participating lenders to “encourage more consistency” in the collection of expenses data.
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Following regulatory scrutiny of how borrower expenses are assessed and verified, the major banks released The Broker Interview Guide for Regulated Lending Secured by Residential Property for use by brokers when undertaking needs analysis and before introducing loans to the major banks.
The guide aims to “clarify the minimum level of inquiries participating lenders require brokers to make on their behalf” and provide a means to record the result of the inquiries made for the lender to review.
It contains prescribed inquiries into matters such as the customer’s purpose and product feature preferences as well as prompts to explain the implications of product choices and features to clients.
Likewise, AMP has now announced that it will also introduce the industry standard guide as of next Monday (22 October 2018), as “making inquiries into a customer’s requirements and objectives is an important part of the responsible lending obligations for lenders and brokers (and other credit assistance providers)”.
A statement from AMP to brokers outlines that the change has been brought in as it “helps brokers and lenders assess the customer’s suitability for the loan they’re applying for by:
- clarifying the inquiries that you, as a broker, need to make on behalf of lenders to meet ASIC’s responsible lending obligations (RG209);
- encouraging consistency in how this information is collected and recorded across the industry; and
- facilitating conversation with the customer about their financial situation, requirements and objectives and product and loan feature preferences”.
As such, from next week, customers will need to answer the questions in the guide when they apply for a new loan or an increase, participate in the interview and sign the guide to verify the information recorded.
Brokers will need to therefore complete the guide as part of their initial assessment, whenever a customer wants to apply for a new loan or an increase, and submit this information as part of the customer’s loan application on ApplyOnline via the new “Compliance” tab (new loans) and attach a signed copy of the guide as part of the supporting documents. The Compliance tab is expected to be live on the AMP Lodgement Centre by 10am on Monday, and through aggregator broker software by 25 October.
The mortgage industry has been reviewing the way it collects and reports expense checks recently, following scrutiny from the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.
As well as scrutinising broker commissions and banker incentives, Commissioner Kenneth Hayne looked at how lenders and brokers utilise the Household Expenditure Measure (HEM) when fulfilling their responsible lending obligations — an issue that arose during the first round of hearings and has recently been a source of debate in the broking industry.
[Related: New tool to reduce risk and boost compliance efficiency]
