Credit licensees with responsibility for authorised credit representatives need to have better oversight of the documents involved in credit assessments. They also need a better understanding of the type of credit assistance provided by each of their representatives and they need to be more thorough in their compliance checks.These are among the recommendations the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has made after reviewing licensed credit assistance providers' monitoring and supervision of credit representatives.ASIC's review was designed to discover how the lending industry was complying with responsible lending obligations, which have been in force since 2011. It published its findings in a report (Report 330) issued last week.There are about 6000 credit licensees and 24,000 credit assistance providers, who are authorised credit representatives of a credit licensee. Of the 6000 licensees, just 25 are responsible for about 50 per cent of all credit representatives.ASIC selected 18 licensees for review; all had a large number of authorised representatives. The regulator found that their responsible lending, compliance and training documents generally reflected its regulatory guidance, although the extent to which the content was tailored to the individual business varied widely.ASIC has recommended that compliance and training documents be specifically tailored to reflect the nature, scale and complexity of a licensee's business.ASIC found there was significant variation in the manner and extent to which credit licensees monitored their representatives' ongoing eligibility to be authorised as credit representatives (for example, whether they were they still members of an external dispute resolution scheme).It recommended that credit licensees should have appropriate monitoring practices in place to ensure their representatives are qualified.ASIC found that 12 licensees relied solely on the credit representatives to maintain access to records of all material that formed the basis of a responsible lending assessment. It said best practice was for the licensee to have a central system, which retained all the documents involved in a credit assessment.ASIC was concerned that some licensees could not identify the volume and type of credit assistance that its representatives were engaged in. Licensees only had this information in aggregate.It recommended that licensees should be able to identify all instances of credit assistance provided by each of their representatives (including instances where credit was not ultimately provided).Most of the 18 licensees were conducting regular compliance reviews of the credit assistance provided by their representatives. Close to half did multiple reviews each year.ASIC recommended that staff undertaking compliance reviews be qualified to undertake these and that reviews not be compromised by credit representatives being made aware in advance of the transactions to be reviewed.It said it was concerned that some reviews took a "box-ticking" approach that checked for the presence of certain documents without investigating whether the information in the documents, such as bank statements, actually verified the consumer's financial situation and supported the assessment.