The Banking Code Compliance Committee will inquire into banks’ management of deceased estates and loan guarantees in the year ahead.

The chief executive of the BCCC, Prue Monument, said the committee would also be looking at banks’ approach to accessibility and their dealings with vulnerable customers.

Monument is also the Australian Financial Complaints Authority’s general manager of code compliance and monitoring, which provides a secretariat for a number of industry compliance committees.

With the exception of deceased estates, these are all areas that have been the subject of recent critical reports by the BCCC or the Customer Owned Banking Code Compliance Committee.

Last year, the BCCC released the results of a review of banks’ compliance with Banking Code guarantee obligations, reporting that there was inadequate or ineffective monitoring of compliance and numerous instances where banks could not demonstrate compliance.

The code obligations are designed to ensure that people make fully informed decisions before agreeing to be a guarantor but the BCCC found that the banks were failing to consistently make full disclosure of key information to guarantors.

Also last year, the BCCC released a review of banks’ compliance with Part 4 of the Banking Code, which includes obligations covering access, dealings with vulnerable customers and the provision of basic accounts. 

It said banks have invested significant resources to improve their capabilities in these areas but progress is inconsistent and more needs to be done. It said there were gaps in staff training and service delivery, and inadequate monitoring.

It called for banks to take a more flexible approach to identifying vulnerability and to test the effectiveness of their accessibility options through a process of continuous improvement.

In June, the Customer Owned Banking Code Compliance Committee issued a report on mutual banks’ handling of vulnerability, which said few of the 57 code subscribers have policies and processes covering all of the potential vulnerability circumstances.