'Mortgage fraud' hitting vulnerable: advocate
Banking and Finance Consumers Support Association president Denise Brailey warned the big four
banks were scrapping some unpopular fees and cracking down on home loan applications as a last-
minute attempt to win public support and stave off a Royal Commission.
Banks dodge a bullet
The big banks dodge one bullet, with APRA's relatively modest capital increase, but the regulator still
has mortgages in its sights.
On Sunday, the Commonwealth Bank announced it was scrapping fees for customers using other bank's ATM machines.
That decision was quickly followed by the ANZ, Westpac and NAB.
Ms Brailey has long accused the banks of committing widespread mortgage fraud to increase profits
by deliberately targeting vulnerable people in the community.
These include pensioners the banks dubbed ARIP customers — or asset rich and income poor.
Ms Brailey said she had more than 2,000 low income people on her books that had lost or faced
losing their homes after being "preyed on by banks" and granted loans they could not afford.
"I have seen 70 and 80-year-olds on incomes of $30,000 a year given million dollar loans. It is just a
disgrace," she said.
"These are not isolated incidents, every case I've looked at has got fraud, some of them have got
forgery, but they are all unaffordable, unstainable, unverified loans.
"In some cases, the elderly customers were paying the interest on their loans with the bank's money."
Oversupply fuelling property slump
Meanwhile, a major forecasting firm said a boom had resulted in an oversupply of dwellings in Queensland, WA, SA, the NT and the ACT.
BIS Oxford Economics also predicted a slump in house prices and building construction in Perth was set to continue for at least another 18 months.
BIS Oxford Economics managing director Robert Mellor said the oversupply of detatched dwellings had seen house prices fall 13 per cent in Perth in the past two years, to levels not seen since 2007.