ASB chief executive Vittoria Shortt thinks the current enquiry into the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA) might bring good results.
Vittoria Shortt was speaking in an interview with TMMOnline after the ASB's latest six monthly result.
During the interview, Shortt moved on from numbers to discuss the elephant in many people's rooms, the CCCFA, saying she “fully supported” the intent of the act.
“But the reality is that the changes are very prescriptive, so while we might want to apply the intent, we have to apply the letter of the law.
“When we do that, we are seeing an impact of around 7% of customers that we would have liked to lend to, but have not been able to, given these changes.”
Shortt said losing 7% of customers had not been quantified in dollar terms, but the message was still clear that the law had to be amended.
And she was quietly confident that that would happen. Changes could be made to support the intent of the law, without its unintended consequences. There were two alterations she really wanted to see.
“The first one is that there is a lot of prescription around discretionary spending … but when people get into financial hardship, we know that they change their spending. This factor is not adequately dealt with at the moment.
“The second thing is that we have to ask the same question - and verify it – whether it is for a $1000 credit card or a $1 million home loan.
“We just don't think the same level of questioning and verification is required.
“We also can't take into account what we know about our customers. We could have had a customer for 30 years, and they are a great customer and we know them really well, but we can't take that information into account.
“It's the same process whether you are a brand new customer for us or a long term customer.”
Despite these worries, Shortt was confident that real change was possible.
“The facts that the review has been set up so quickly, that the scope of the review is so broad, that the time frames are tight, suggest a serious intent for change.”
