The Financial Rights Legal Centre (Financial Rights) has expressed concerns about the Government’s plans to amend the Privacy Act to allow financial hardship information to appear on customers’ credit reports. (1) The Attorney-General made the announcement today to support the Government’s intention to introduce mandatory comprehensive credit reporting. “These proposed changes to the Privacy Act will only discourage vulnerable customers [ More ]

The Financial Rights Legal Centre (Financial Rights) has welcomed the Government’s release of exposure draft legislation that extends the unfair contract term (UCT) regime to insurance contracts. (1) “Unfair contract term laws have for some time applied to most if not all contracts that Australian’s sign – except, that is, to insurance,” said Alexandra Kelly, Financial Rights’ Director of Casework. [ More ]

Tuesday, 9 July 2019 The Financial Rights Legal Centre (Financial Rights) has welcomed the Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s (ASIC’s) announcement that they will consult on using new Product Intervention Powers to intervene in the short term credit industry. The new product intervention power allows ASIC to intervene where financial and credit products have resulted in or are likely to [ More ]

The Financial Rights Legal Centre has called on the general insurance industry to act immediately to clean up poor investigation practices and rein in their investigators following the release of a damning report by ASIC on car insurance investigations. The report, Roadblocks and Roundabouts: A Review of Car Insurance Claims Investigations, found that: Investigations targeted mostly valid claims with over [ More ]