Further improving consumer and small business access to redress
The Government is committed to ensuring consumers and small businesses can access redress when they suffer from financial sector misconduct. For too long, consumers and small businesses have missed out on, or experienced substantial delays in getting, the compensation to which they are entitled.
A key measure is the establishment of a compensation scheme of last resort to ensure that awards of compensation made to consumers or small businesses for misconduct are paid, with the scheme to be established by no later than December 2020 to cover unpaid determinations made under AFCA’s rules after 1 November 2018. The Government is also working to strengthen the regulatory framework around firm remediation processes by giving additional powers and responsibilities to ASIC and AFCA.
The Commonwealth, states and territories have agreed to move towards a national farm debt mediation scheme. Work on this scheme is already underway.