Australia’s consumer credit regime is exacting, fast-moving and unforgiving of poor process. This course gives you practical mastery over credit contracts from end to end – what they are, when they’re regulated, how they must be structured and disclosed, and how to manage them compliantly across their lifecycle.

Centred on the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth), the National Credit Code, associated regulations and ASIC expectations, the program translates black-letter law into day-to-day controls for designing, distributing and administering credit contracts without exposing your customers – or your licence – to unnecessary risk.

You’ll dive deeply into both short-term credit contracts (including SACC/MACC settings and anti-avoidance safeguards) and continuing credit contracts (credit cards, overdrafts and personal lines of credit). We’ll unpack how to classify credit contracts correctly, how fee and interest caps interact with product features, and how disclosure, statements and payment-allocation rules operate in practice.

You’ll learn to apply responsible lending consistently – verifying income and expenses, testing suitability (including for limit increases and refinances), and documenting clear requirements and objectives that align the credit contracts you recommend or enter with the consumer’s actual needs.

From a risk and governance lens, the course shows you how to embed robust product design and distribution controls for credit contracts: hard-coded pricing and total-cost limits, compliant pre-contract packs and statement templates, variation-notice workflows, hardship pathways that genuinely relieve pressure, and monitoring that surfaces repeat borrowing, persistent debt and other detriment signals early.

We also cover enforcement realities – what typically triggers ASIC action on credit contracts, how AFCA approaches individual disputes, and how to execute rapid, customer-centred remediation when errors arise.

Designed for brokers, lenders, compliance leaders and credit risk professionals, the program focuses on practical execution. Real-world scenarios and worked examples illustrate how credit contracts behave under stress: from short-cycle lending that risks fee stacking, to balance-transfer promotions that can trap purchases if payment allocation is wrong, through to hardship requests that require swift, fair variations and transparent communication. You’ll leave with checklists, file-build standards and governance patterns that make compliant handling of credit contracts repeatable at scale.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Understand the Australian consumer credit framework as it applies to short-term and continuing credit.
• Differentiate and analyse the structures, obligations, and risk profiles of SACC/MACC vs continuing credit contracts, including edge cases (mixed-purpose lending, exemptions, and anti-avoidance triggers).
• Apply responsible lending to real-world scenarios and verifying income/expenses with evidence, assessing suitability (originations, limit increases, refinances), and recognising vulnerability and foreseeable changes.
• Evaluate product, pricing, disclosure, and statement practices for compliance and determine appropriate remediation and regulatory engagement when issues arise.
• Design and implement compliant workflows and controls for short-term and continuing credit portfolios.