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 ]
The Financial Rights Legal Centre (Financial Rights) has welcomed the Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s (ASIC’s) announcement that they will consult on banning unsolicited phone sales of direct life insurance and Consumer Credit Insurance (CCI) sales practices.[1] Unsolicited direct life insurance is sold to consumers by life insurers or their sales partners, by outbound telemarketing or situations where consumers would [ 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 ]
Consumer groups ask Canberra to move quickly on bank payments to mortgage brokers Consumer groups have quit en masse from a mortgage broking industry forum, saying that the industry isn’t interested in doing the right thing by the community and has been disingenuous. CHOICE, Consumer Action Law Centre, Financial Counselling Australia and Financial Rights Legal Centre have removed consumer representatives [ More ]
