One in two Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in financial stress.

There has been, and continues to be, systemic failure across corporate Australia to understand the underlying intergenerational trauma, cultural and socioeconomic issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

In addition, community values of kinship unique to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community conflict with concepts of financial independence and self-interested behaviour, making many financial literacy messages appear impractical or incomprehensible.

Assumptions regarding financial literacy, and equitable access to fair and competitive financial services and banks simply don’t hold true for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and render them vulnerable to predatory practices and exposed to poor value products, such as overpriced consumer leases with purchase options, pay day loans, funeral and other junk insurance.

Lending processes which marginalise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders – such as closing regional and remote bank branches NOTE WESTPAC IS THE ONLY BANK OF THE BIG 4 TO STILL OPERATE BRANCHES IN REMOTE AREAS, and requiring the production of mainstream identification documents not readily available to many members of the community - make low doc, high cost payday lending, buy now pay later and wage advance products more readily accessible and available. It also exposes consumers to increased risk of financial harm.

Regional and remote communities rely heavily on private transport, leaving people at risk of high cost car loans for poor quality vehicles, and other junk add-on products.Accessing assistance to help resolve these problems can be difficult due to language and literacy, physical distance, perception of government authority, reliance on existing high risk products and distrust of non-Aboriginal organisations.

First Nations consumers often seek assistance in advocating and navigating the complexity of corporate Australia. It is clear that medium and large companies need to engage in more culturally appropriate strategies with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consumers throughout the consumer relationship.

It is critical that Australian companies seek to culturally educate themselves at all levels so they can approach First Nations consumers with a better understanding of the barriers and challenges these consumers are facing on a daily basis. Companies cannot simply assume they are meeting the cultural needs of these consumers because they have Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs). A RAP can be one way of planning cultural engagement and inclusion, but it is not an end in itself.

In recent years, whether through the influence of the Royal Commission into Financial Services or the more widespread use of Reconcilliation Action Plans, many major companies have started to advertise special First Nations support services including phonelines or email accounts.

Problems include:

• insufficient visibility and promotion;
• inappropriate or inadequate staffing;
• technical or process deficiencies;
• limited coverage (they are only available for a sub-set of First Nations people or for a limited range of issues);
• staff lack sufficient authority or expertise to address issues raised by callers.

If a company is going to have a specialist phoneline or email or assistance team for First Nations customers:

• it needs to work,
• it needs to be answered, and
• it must be culturally appropriate to meet community needs.

Specialist First Nations assistance teams need to be empowered to solve problems for customers and resolve disputes on the spot as often as possible. There are many reasons why it is difficult for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to make a call to a large corporation, and failure to address an issue in that one call can be a significant lost opportunity. For example:

• First Nations households may be sharing one device, meaning the customer has limited opportunities to make calls.
• There may be problems with connectivity. While this is most pronounced in very remote communities we are aware of many regional areas where this is also a problem.
• An issue related to connectivity is that some people may have one place where they get phone coverage that is in on the top of a hill, or in the middle of a paddock, making it difficult to receive return phone calls.
• Paying for call credit or being disconnected due to non-payment of ongoing plan costs may be an issue. The latter may be exacerbated where customers have been sold inappropriate and unaffordable plans by telcos in the first instance.
• There are significant levels of disempowerment due to intergenerational trauma and discrimination which can affect people’s willingness to call, their ability to express their issue and needs during that call, and their threshold for coping with barriers that are thrown up during the call process.

Aboriginal consumers don’t fit the same mold, medium and large corporate Australia should be encouraged to ensure their non-Indigenous staff are able to develop true cultural competency to engage with First Nations customers. It is a poor excuse to avoid developing this competency by saying you simply treat all customers fairly and alike.

These teams must seek to train and employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in them. If a company cannot employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, they should not be able to advertise that they have this specialist service. The managers of these teams ideally need to be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people or at least have had extensive cultural safety training and have spent some time working with First Nations communities, ideally urban, regional and remote communities in order to understand the daily realities of the customers they are trying to assist. Phone numbers should be easy to find, and email accounts should work. Companies should use a periodic shadow shopping exercise to ensure their promises have been embedded in the day to day services.

Editors Note

PIPA wish to thank Bettina Cooper Aboriginal Financial Counsellor of MobStrong - Financial Rights Legal Centre for her approval to republish this article.

This article was first published in a submission by Mob Strong Debt Help to the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs Inquiry into how the corporate sector establishes models of best practice to foster better engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consumers on 9th December 2021

The full article can be read here