00:00 With high interest rates and the cost of living biting hard, financial counsellors have been
00:06 run off their feet with calls from people struggling to pay their mortgage.
00:11 Counsellors are seeing increased demand, we're seeing people calling with increasing levels
00:15 of stress, people feeling completely overwhelmed.
00:19 Financial regulator ASIC has now released a scathing report accusing Australian banks
00:24 of failing a growing number of customers seeking financial hardship assistance.
00:29 They're in crisis, they've lost their job, they've lost a loved one, they're very ill,
00:35 they could be the victim of family violence.
00:38 These are people that need special attention.
00:41 The report found there'd been a 54% increase in hardship notices from the last quarter
00:46 of 2022 to the last three months of 2023, when the number of borrowers seeking assistance
00:52 jumped to almost 53,000.
00:54 But despite growing levels of mortgage stress, ASIC found that access to financial hardship
00:59 assistance could be hard to come by, and more than a third of customers found it so onerous
01:03 they gave up.
01:04 ASIC Chair Jo Longo said while lenders were making improvements, they had to lift their
01:09 game.
01:10 They've made a bit of progress, but there's a long way to go.
01:12 The head of the Australian Banking Association, Anna Bly, has defended the sector.
01:16 The really encouraging thing here is that of all the customers who put in a full application,
01:22 94% of them got approved.
01:24 We appreciate that the lenders are listening, the ASIC report is clear about what needs
01:30 to be done, and now we expect to see urgent action.
01:34 That could include legal action by the regulator.
01:37 ASIC will take whatever action we think is necessary to ensure compliance with the National
01:42 Credit Code.
01:43 That includes taking banks or lenders to court.
01:46 A warning of more scrutiny to follow.
01:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]
