When the glamour fades…

Some financial products are marketed to young adults as the pathway to glamour but lead instead to vulnerable young people accumulating thousands of dollars of debt – impacting their capacity to sustain tenancies, support children or even buy food or medicine.

LawRight recently joined with Financial Counsellors Australia (FCA) to call for better regulation of financial products such as Afterpay and other Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) products.  Read the full story.  We consider the ASIC product intervention power is not sufficient to regulate BNPL as it does not appropriately and immediately respond to people in financial hardship or place clear guidelines on companies to lend responsibly and appropriately or to respond to hardship.
LawRight’s partnership for young adults at Brisbane Youth Service (BYS) integrates with our Financial Counsellor and frequently assists these young people.

A young client with multiple disabilities who met with us at BYS had accumulated $2000 of debts to three BNPL services. We resolved two of the debts but the final BNPL provider was unresponsive and could not be compelled due to the lack of protections that apply to other credit products. However, the advocacy and relationships of our Financial Counsellor resolved the debt. We were also able to meet with this provider to work together better next time.

Our client agrees with increased regulation and in response to our advocacy said: “a weight has been lifted and my confidence to move forward and be more financially secure has changed massively. The benefits to my mental health and wellbeing cannot be understated – it’s a completely different dynamic, it’s life changing, it feels very good to not have that weight anymore.”