00:00 So, they're getting very inventive and it's become much easier to do with online tools
00:05 available to do it. So, the two ways they're doing it, if they want to understate expenses,
00:12 they can basically get a template of what looks exactly like a bank statement and they
00:18 might be able to take out usual expenses that they have there. And the other way they're
00:23 lying is that they're basically using their payslips, so taking their payslips and overstating
00:31 their income, so they might change the income they're earning, the tax, all that sort of
00:35 stuff. And, you know, it's becoming far more common. I spoke to Sean Quigleyani, here's
00:41 what he had to say.
00:44 Somebody else might put together a fake payslip who's a contractor and they need to be seen
00:49 as a full-time employee to successfully get access to the credit that they need. We see
00:55 other examples of people removing transactions from their bank statements to only show that
01:04 they might have no kids, but they have kids. So, the things, people can be very creative
01:11 and there's many levers that you can pull.
01:14 So, Nassim, what's the reason more people are lying?
01:18 Yeah, so Sean Quigleyani is the guy that you just heard from and he detects for big banks
01:25 as well as other lenders where the documents are fraudulent. And one of the reasons he
01:30 suggested is that people are really under a lot of pressure to try and break into the
01:35 property market. They really want to get a home loan, but with higher mortgage repayments,
01:40 with the increasing cost of living, with higher house prices, it's now become much harder
01:45 to try and crack the property market. And in addition to that, as you've seen, it's
01:50 actually quite easy for people to make up documents, to go on the internet and get these
01:58 documents. So, that's increased, that's resulted in the threefold increase in these fraudulent
02:06 applications since interest rates started rising in May 2022. Here's some of what Sean
02:11 has to say about it.
02:13 You can actually just edit a PDF. You click this button, it opens the PDF up in an editable
02:21 mode. And then you can change the dates, you can change the financials. And so, like if
02:29 you wanted to change the rate here, you can change the hourly rate, change the gross income,
02:36 the principal income, and of course, the net income, change the tax as well. And then that
02:45 is complete.
02:48 And so, you heard from Sean Quigleyani there. Today, the Reserve Bank is expected to meet
02:53 for the final time this year, is expected to leave interest rates on hold. But this
03:00 might not be the end of rate hikes. There is a possibility that if inflation doesn't
03:05 come down within the Reserve Bank target range, then you might see rate hikes by February
03:11 next year again. And this is happening in an environment where 450,000 Australians are
03:17 about to roll off fixed mortgages onto higher variable rates. So, if there are further rate
03:23 rises, that will leave a lot of Australians in a really tough position.
03:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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