When assisting your clients with personal loans, you must be aware of your regulatory obligations. In this article, our Compliance Team gives you a brief overview of the steps you should take to remain compliant when lodging a personal loan application through Mercury Nexus.
Understand your regulatory obligations
Personal loans, by their very name, are consumer credit products. Assisting or suggesting a client apply for a personal loan constitutes credit assistance under the NCCP Act, which means you must comply with the Act’s Best Interests Duty (BID) and Responsible Lending Obligations.
In order to meet your BID obligations, you should, at minimum:
run a credit check as the availability/pricing of personal loans is often risk-based and
ensure you have considered (and told your customer that you have considered) available alternatives and why you have selected the recommended product.
Note: Best Interests Duty - currently only applies to mortgage brokers.
The level and type of enquiries you make for each client will vary depending upon the circumstances, including the client’s own answers to questions within the Needs Analysis. If, during your analysis, you uncover matters that may impact a decision to provide credit to that client, you may need to make further enquiries to ensure that the product is not unsuitable.
How to lodge personal loans in Mercury Nexus
Within the Opportunity Type of ‘Personal Loans’, select the ‘Disclosure Documents’ box in your second toolbar, giving you access to the documents in sequential order.
Important: Nexus does not currently hold any product information, interest rates, fees and charges or servicing calculators from our personal loans lender panel. Therefore the ‘Preliminary Assessment’ and ‘Summary of Requirements and Credit Proposal’ documents must be manually completed (complete each section/area highlighted and/or missing) to match the loan facility approved by the lender.
Ensure you complete the red sections under Customer’s Requirements and Objectives and Product Recommendation and Selection tabs in the Compliance workflow.
The Needs Analysis questionnaire will help you capture information about the client’s personal and financial situation, their needs, and objectives for borrowing.
All supporting documentation (just like a home loan application) must be obtained, verified and uploaded to the ‘Attachments’ section within the opportunity.
Tip: Personal Lending can also be conducted via a Tick & Flick using Quick AF.
We’re happy to assist you if you have any questions. Reach out to the compliance team via Mercury or by emailing [email protected].