Industry and community involvement

Our industry and community involvement Presentations BFSO made 33 presentations to a wide range of industry, community and government groups including: Australian Bankers’ Association Australian Federal Police Banking and Financial Services Law Association Commonwealth Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts Financial Counsellors’ Association of Western Australia Legal Aid Queensland Leo Cussen Institute New South Wales Financial Counsellors’ Association RMIT Diploma of Financial Services’ students South Australian Financial Counsellors’ Association Topics included: Privacy compliance Investigating disputes under the EFT Code Maladministration & hardship Ombudsman’s perspectives on the card industry and its regulation Cybercrime in banking and financial services Introduction to BFSO Use of forensic support in BFSO cases BFSO’s approach to disputes – Use of expert advice Submissions Over the course of the year, BFSO provided submissions to the following reviews: Consumer Affairs Victoria - Consumer Credit ReviewConsumer Credit Review Foundation for Effective Markets and Governance - Review of the Code Compliance Monitoring Committee Northern Territory Department of Justice - Regulation of Book Up in the Northern Territory Federal Privacy Commissioner - Review of Credit Provider Determinations Concerning Assignees and Classes of Credit Provider Bulletins BFSO produced four bulletins about its approach to emerging legal and industry practice issues. Topics included: Dealing with customers in financial difficulty New ACCC/ASIC Debt Collection Guideline Unsecured credit and maladministration Systemic issues: concurrent investigations SORT IT BFSO produced a joint bulletin with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman entitled SORT IT. The bulletin included a series of case studies involving problems experienced by young people with mobile phone, credit card and other debt. The bulletin was launched at the Victorian Commercial Teachers’ Association annual conference and has been distributed to schools and teaching organisations nationally. SORT IT also formed the basis of a presentation to 170 Victorian secondary school students as part of Law Week 2006. View of PDF of SORT IT. Our website Our website contains important information about BFSO’s jurisdiction and processes. We received 86,798 hits to our website during the reporting period. On our website you can find: Our publications Information about how to lodge a dispute, including our online dispute form and jurisdiction checker (this year, there were 13,072 hits to the jurisdiction checker page) Dispute resolution contacts for all our members Case studies and sample Findings Thank you... BFSO continually receive feedback from the community. Here are just a few of the comments. Back to top