Advisers embrace Westpac after trail commissions removed

Westpac last year made a commercial decision to stop paying trial and they were entitled to do that, but advisers been short-changed on the loans settled at Westpac from 1/11/2024 to 14/10/2025 is not ok. Any loan that was settled from 1/4/2025 to 14/10/2025 advisers, received .60% upfront, with no trail. It's appalling that Westpac have got away with this and advisers need to remember that Westpac clearly shortchanged advisers. Westpac’s attitude to advisers at the time was essentially “nothing to see here” we’ve paid you a lump sum payment now move on whereas any decent lawyer in a court of law would have been well within their right to sight this decision made by the bank as an example of corporate purloining. As another adviser said last year it's shocking that the head groups have not a) managed to negotiate on this and b) apologise to their members. Did they not think that anyone would pick this up? Or did they not pick this up themselves? Westpac’s behaviour around the ending of trail is an enabler now to the other main bank lenders still paying trail and how they also plan on exiting trail commission. This industry keeps shooting itself in the foot when we all collectively fail to stand up to examples of poor lender conduct or should I say more correctly when the head groups fail to stand up for their members, head groups been the supposed advocates for mortgage advisers in this country. Again, banks are well within their rights to change how they renumerate mortgage advisers however they cannot be reneging on earlier renumeration agreements entered and subsequently resulting in advisers been short-changed. If Westpac’s chief executive thinks that the adviser community has forgotten the above, then she is mistaken. This is a line that should never have been crossed. Add to this the fact that Westpac’s home loan policy is inferior to the other main banks on several key points e.g. their extra repayment policy it’s very easy for an adviser to recommend another lender to a customer for a home loan. In terms of an advice recommendation and justifying to the FMA during an audit why you’ve placed your customer at Westpac an adviser would certainly not be able to prove Westpac’s policy was equal to or superior to the other main banks in the market. As an adviser if you’ve been short-changed by the same bank offering your customer an inferior home loan product are you really going to recommend them to John & Jane buying their first home? No.

This was another example of proof that dealer groups are no more than glorified pay clerks , all they do is to try and suck as much money out of their adviser members as they can, this is their sole existence and to make it worse they have a monopoly , advisers cant access bank products without going through a middle man first ,creating a bulling environment where its do as we say, pay the money we say or we will cut you ( shut down your lively hood ) and even if you have a FAP license and you are meeting regulatory requirements for the FMA , dealers want to force you (at your cost) to jump through hoops to meet requirements for their FAP license , essentially being regulated twice, the groups penalize FAP license holders saying that banks, the FMA want all advisers to go under one FAP group license which I don’t believe this was the FMA’s initial intention , maybe the FMA needs to look into this.

Westpac’ chief executive says advisers are embracing the bank after they stopped paying trail. Really? As someone else has pointed out already it must be a cold embrace unless some of us don’t have any issue with been denied payment for business we placed there previously. I don’t know about the rest of you guys but not receiving what I was promised has left a sour taste in my mouth. Increasingly sour when my aggregator has not managed to bring Westpac into line. How many advisers out there are kicking themselves now that they took their customers to Westpac for their last home loan application and how many of us are already planning to refinance the customer at the earliest opportunity? Lots, I would bet. Westpac aren’t even paying advisers a refix fee, so unless you like working for free, it’s the only logical decision you can make.