No abstract

Consumers in Australia and other developed countries are increasingly required to interact with providers of complex financial products and services, and to estimate, mitigate or absorb the risks that flow from their financial decisions. A range of debt-related problems in Australia have been attributed to low levels of financial literacy in the population. However, there has been limited research exploring the relationship between low financial literacy and the problem of financial hardship, where a consumer takes on payment obligations under a contract, but then becomes unable to meet them when they fall due. Drawing on a survey of Australians who recently experienced debt problems, this article examines the impact of financial literacy levels and levels of confidence in managing day-today spending on severity of financial hardship. The article also examines the impacts of financial literacy and confidence levels on the strategies employed to get by financially while in debt. The article shows that while there is no straightforward relationship between low financial literacy and severity of financial hardship, lower levels of financial literacy may reduce consumers' ability to avoid some of the more serious consequences of default, particularly if coupled with overconfidence about their ability to manage spending.

Th e Financial Ombudsman Service ( FOS ) was established in 2008 to resolve disputes between Australian consumers and fi nancial service providers. Th is article outlines the role of FOS in resolving disputes under the statutory protections for Australians in fi nancial hardship.Th is article also sets out the results of a study of data collected by FOS in relation to fi nancial hardship disputes resolved between 2010 and 2014. Th is data highlights the importance of FOS in a context where most disputes are resolved outside the courts, particularly in the aftermath of the global fi nancial crisis, when the number of fi nancial hardship disputes rose signifi cantly.

Financial hardship, in a credit society such as Australia, can affect almost anyone. To protect consumers from the negative impacts of financial hardship-which can include the stresses of enforcement action and disconnection from essential services-legal protections have been incorporated into the regulatory frameworks for the consumer credit, energy, water and telecommunications sectors. In this article, we outline the findings of our study, which used a survey of financial counsellors around Australia and focus group interviews with Victorian financial counsellors to examine how these legal protections are being implemented by service providers in these four sectors. Our findings highlight a tendency on the part of service providers to take a generic, one-size-fits-all approach to compliance with these legal protections that prevents them from effectively assisting consumers struggling with debt. We discuss the particular shortcomings of this approach in the context of consumers living on low incomes-especially Centrelink incomes-and outline the policy implications of our findings for assisting these vulnerable groups.

In this article, we focus on one of the most important statutory protections for Australian consumers in financial hardship: the right to seek a variation of a credit contract contained in s 72 of the National Credit Code. We provide a comprehensive history of this right, which has been part of Australian consumer credit law since the 1970s. Over the years, it has evolved from a very limited right to seek an extension of time to pay a debt on grounds of illness and unemployment, to a broader provision that requires credit providers to comply with a prescribed process before they can commence enforcement action against a consumer who has sought a variation to their payment arrangements. We also undertake an analysis of the evolution of this right to demonstrate that despite improved understandings of the causes of financial hardship, it continues to envisage a middle-class subject with a strong awareness of their rights, and excludes some particularly vulnerable consumers. This right is also representative of a regulatory approach that envisages a limited role for consumer credit law, and does not sufficiently address the imbalance of bargaining power between the consumer and the credit provider. We argue for the imposition of an obligation to provide a minimum range of hardship assistance directly upon credit providers, as a means of addressing this imbalance and ensuring more meaningful protection for consumers in financial hardship.