00:01A growing presence in the Northern Territory as the corporate watchdog opens a new office
00:06and bolsters its workforce.
00:09Since I became chair I felt very strongly that we needed to build our presence in the
00:14Northern Territory for several reasons.
00:16To start with having only one person here was simply, to my mind, not appropriate.
00:21The ASIC chair says financial services are moving entirely online, leaving regional and
00:27remote communities vulnerable to unscrupulous practice.
00:30I want ASIC to be more effective from a law enforcement perspective, to be able to go
00:35into remote communities and actually gather the evidence and work with remote communities
00:41to avoid harm occurring.
00:43Less than two years ago, an ASIC report revealed thousands of low-income Indigenous bank customers
00:49were trapped in high fee accounts, paying exorbitant transaction and dishonour fees.
00:54Customers, many in Central Australia, were charged more than $6 million of those fees.
01:00A greater presence for ASIC welcomed by the Territory's peak Indigenous Justice Agency.
01:05We routinely help our clients with consumer issues like high fee accounts, Centrelink
01:10debts and banking disputes.
01:12Digital exclusion from bad internet access, branch closures, language barriers and culturally
01:17mismatched online banking fits with the patterns we have seen in client cases involving high fee
01:22high fee accounts highlighted in ASIC's report.
01:25A helping hand for vulnerable communities.
Comments