Best Interest Duty: Automating Compliance with Your CRM

Since January 2021, mortgage brokers have been subject to a Best Interest Duty (BID) under the NCCP Act. This requires brokers to act in the consumer's best interest, not just avoid unsuitable loans. Proving you met BID requires documented evidence of your recommendation process, evidence that a properly configured CRM can generate automatically.

What BID documentation requires

To demonstrate BID compliance, you need evidence that you: identified the client's objectives and financial situation, considered a range of products from your panel, assessed each option against the client's circumstances, recommended the product that best meets their needs, and explained your reasoning. That's five distinct evidence points per deal, multiplied across your entire pipeline.

CRM features that automate BID evidence

• Structured needs assessment forms that capture objectives in the client's own words
• Product comparison tools that document which options were considered
• Recommendation rationale fields linked to the specific deal record
• Client acknowledgement tracking showing the recommendation was communicated
• Immutable audit trails that timestamp every step of the recommendation process

Why manual BID documentation fails

Brokers who document BID compliance manually, through Word documents, emails, or freeform CRM notes, consistently produce incomplete evidence. They skip steps under time pressure, use inconsistent formats, and can't prove the chronology of their decision-making process. CRM-enforced workflows ensure every step is completed and timestamped before the deal can progress.