Industry body hopes to see an end to ‘unfair clawbacks’

However, Mr White also said there are a number of critical themes that he hopes will be concluded in 2017.

“I expect to see a positive wrap up on the home loan commission review. I believe it will be a positive result,” he said.

“I also hope to see a conclusion to appropriate LMI disclosure and hope that we will see an end to unfair clawbacks. I’m very bullish about that.”

The FBAA is finalising plans for a new webinar series, which will be available to brokers every three weeks

“There is a big push from us to reinforce knowledge and education in 2017. All of our initiatives are about best practice and broadening the knowledge of Australian brokers,” Mr White said.

The FBAA gained significant traction with brokers in 2016, adding more than 1,500 new members over the year.

More than 650 of the 956 brokers (68.6 per cent) who responded to a recent straw poll by The Adviser said the FBAA’s performance over the last year has been ‘very good’, while 13.9 per cent rated the association’s performance as ‘good’.

However, a similar number of brokers (13.3 per cent) rated the FBAA’s performance as ‘very poor’ over the last year. Just over 2.5 per cent of brokers said the industry body performed poorly and 1.7 per cent said the FBAA’s performance has not changed in 2016.

Mr White said that while the results are very positive, the association still has plenty of work to do and “must not become complacent”.

“Our numbers are still growing strongly and we now have almost 7,000 members. We still have lots of things that we need to achieve,” he said.

Mr White said 2016 has been a busy year for the association, particularly in light of the ongoing ASIC review into broker remuneration.

[Related: Brokers back FBAA]