Ms MaryRose McGovern:

It will still be possible for an individual who has applied for loan facilities to bring a complaint to the Credit Review Office or credit reviewer if it is put on a statutory footing and also to the FSPO, but the two offices have two very discrete jurisdictions. The FSPO will never interfere with the commercial discretion of a financial services provider. We will never direct a provider to make a loan available at a certain rate over a certain period, subject to certain repayments. That is something that the credit reviewer can consider in order to determine whether the lending criteria of a financial services provider were applied correctly. What we will consider, however, is whether, in processing the loan application, the provider acted in accordance with its regulatory obligations, including consumer protection obligations and the like, and whether it treated the person fairly. If a complaint is upheld where a consumer has been treated wrongfully, we might direct the provider to review the application again and process it in a more correct fashion. There are two aspects to this. One concerns the regulatory obligations and the other concerns the actual lending decision rather than the process of assessing the application.