Treasury’s Draft Puts $7.79m of the CSLR Special Levy on Credit Intermediaries. ASIC Prices That Sub-Sector Off Your 2024–25 Credit Rep Count

The number on the table

Treasury’s draft allocation for the 2026–27 Compensation Scheme of Last Resort special levy puts $7.79 million on the credit intermediaries sub-sector — the ASIC industry funding category that covers credit assistance providers, and the one the mortgage and finance broking channel is levied under. On The Adviser‘s reading of the draft, that would lift the sub-sector’s total CSLR contribution for the year to roughly $9.9 million once the ordinary annual levy is counted.

For comparison, ASIC’s published figures for the 2025–26 special levy put the credit intermediaries sub-sector at $667,529.41 in total, spread across 4,137 entities and charged at a rate of $5.72 per credit representative. The Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia has told its members the draft works out at approximately $67 per credit representative — an indicative figure the MFAA itself describes as an estimate, with final amounts not yet set.

That is the part of this story the trade press has covered. The part that matters more for how you plan is further down: the mechanics of how the bill gets struck, and against which year’s numbers.

What Treasury is actually consulting on

The CSLR is funded by annual levies on four sub-sectors: credit intermediaries, credit providers, personal financial advice licensees, and securities dealers. ASIC can only issue an annual levy up to $20 million at the sub-sector level. Anything above that cap has to be collected through a special levy, which the Minister — not the scheme operator and not ASIC — decides to impose.

The scheme operator’s revised estimate for 2026–27 is $198.1 million in claims, fees and costs. That is up $60.6 million on its own initial estimate of $137.5 million, with the number of claims expected to be paid rising from 912 to 1,567. The operator attributes the increase to the final DASS claims cohort and the first tranche of Shield and First Guardian Master Fund claims.

Within that revised estimate, personal financial advice accounts for $190.3 million. Credit intermediation accounts for $2.1 million. Because the advice figure sits so far above the $20 million cap, a special levy of around $170.26 million has to come from somewhere else.

Where it comes from is the question Treasury put out for consultation on 21 September 2026. That consultation closed on 6 October. It was the first application of the “waterfall framework” announced by the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Daniel Mulino, in August.

How the waterfall puts broking in the queue

The framework allocates a shortfall across up to three tiers:

• Tier 1 — the sub-sector whose cap was breached. Personal financial advice contributes a further $10 million on top of its $20 million annual levy.
• Tier 2 — connected sub-sectors. A sector qualifies where its products or services formed, in the consultation’s framing, a substantive part of the pathway to consumer loss. Responsible entities of managed investment schemes are allocated $40 million.
• Tier 3 — retail-facing sub-sectors as backstop. The remaining $120.26 million is spread across 21 retail-facing sub-sectors. Credit intermediaries sit here.

That placement is the whole argument. Broking is not in Tier 1, because the cap that was breached was not broking’s. It is not in Tier 2, because nobody has suggested a mortgage broker’s services formed part of the pathway to the losses being compensated. It is in Tier 3 because it is a retail-facing sub-sector with a licensee population large enough to carry a share.

MFAA chief executive Anja Pannek has made that point in the association’s submission to Treasury. As reported by Broker Daily, she noted that “while mortgage brokers and aggregators were not responsible for the underlying consumer losses,” the proposed allocation is “based on a methodology linked to ASIC’s regulatory effort across different sectors” — a link she has said is not yet clear. Melissa Ashcroft, managing director of AAA Mortgages, put it more bluntly to Broker Daily: “Seems like brokers will, as part of the scheme, be footing a bill that is not ours to carry.” Bernard Desmond, chief executive of Blank Financial, told the same outlet that “brokers who do the right thing shouldn’t continually be asked to pick up the bill for those who don’t.”

The mechanic that decides your share: a metrics year already closed

Here is the operational point, and it is the one worth taking into your next partners’ meeting.

The credit intermediaries sub-sector is not levied on settlement volume, revenue, loan book, or headcount as at today. ASIC’s levy metric for the sub-sector is credit representatives and number of days authorised. And ASIC does not use the current year’s numbers. For the 2026–27 levies, ASIC has published that it uses the 2024–25 Industry Funding business activity metrics. For the 2025–26 special levy, it used 2023–24 metrics.

Three consequences follow for a brokerage.

First, your exposure is already fixed. Whatever your credit representative count looked like across 2024–25 is the number that will be multiplied by whatever per-representative rate ASIC eventually publishes. A brokerage that has since shed authorised reps, or moved brokers onto their own licence, will still be billed on the larger historical figure. There is no action available in October 2026 that reduces a 2026–27 CSLR bill.

Second, the cost scales with authorisations, not production. A firm carrying a dozen credit representative authorisations, some of them low-volume or part-time, is exposed on all twelve. Under the 2025–26 rate of $5.72 that was immaterial. At an order of magnitude higher, the arithmetic of carrying lightly-used authorisations changes — not for this year’s bill, which is already set, but for the 2024–25-equivalent decisions you are making now about future years.

Third, there is a separate annual levy running alongside it. ASIC has published the 2026–27 CSLR annual levy for credit intermediaries as a $100 minimum levy plus a graduated component of $37 per credit representative, with a sub-sector estimate of $2.156 million across 4,095 entities. The special levy, if determined, lands on top of that. When you model the cost, model both.

Why $67 is an estimate, not an invoice

The $67 per credit representative figure has travelled quickly, and it is worth being precise about what it is. It is the MFAA’s indicative calculation, circulated to its National Aggregator Forum members and reported by Broker Daily on 13 October. It scales the known 2025–26 rate of $5.72 by the ratio between last year’s sub-sector pool and the proposed one. The Adviser has reported the increase as approximately 1,067 per cent, from around $668,000 to $7.79 million.

That method is reasonable, and the MFAA has been careful to flag it as an estimate. But three things can still move the final number: the Minister may determine a different allocation to the one consulted on; the credit representative population in the 2024–25 metrics year will not be identical to the earlier year; and the apportionment formula under the levy regulations is applied by ASIC after the determination, not before.

If you are budgeting, treat $67 per representative as a planning figure with a wide band around it, and do not put it in a client-facing or staff-facing document as a settled cost.

What this is not

Two clarifications, because summary coverage of levy stories tends to blur them.

This is not a finding about broker conduct. The CSLR pays compensation where a consumer has an unpaid AFCA determination against a firm that has failed. The claims driving the 2026–27 estimate are overwhelmingly in personal financial advice. Nothing in the consultation asserts, and nothing in this article should be read as asserting, wrongdoing by any broker, brokerage or lender.

This is also not a Best Interests Duty issue, despite landing in the same fortnight as ASIC’s review of best interests duties and complaints handling practices. Your obligations under section 158LA of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act and ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 273 are unchanged by the levy. They are separate instruments with separate consequences, and conflating them in a file note or a compliance update would be an error. As always, confirm how any of this applies to your licence with your aggregator’s compliance team or your own adviser.

When the money actually lands

A special levy is not payable when it is announced. ASIC has published the sequence:

1. The scheme operator registers a revised estimate and notifies the Minister that it exceeds the $20 million cap.
2. If a special levy is required, a Ministerial instrument is registered.
3. The instrument is tabled in each House within six sitting days.
4. A 15 sitting-day disallowance period applies in each House.
5. ASIC aims to issue levy notices within 30 days after the disallowance period ends, through the ASIC Regulatory Portal or by post.
6. Levies are due for payment 30 days after issue.

The previous cycle is the best guide to timing. The operator notified the Minister on 4 July 2025; the determination was made on 11 December 2025 and registered as F2025L01557. On that precedent, a 2026–27 determination made late this year would produce levy notices well into 2027, with payment due 30 days after that. This is a cash-flow item for the next financial year, not this quarter — which is precisely why it is easy to forget to provision for.

What to review this week

1. Pull your credit representative count for 2024–25. Not today’s count — the authorisations recorded across that financial year, and the days each was authorised. That is the base your share will be struck on.
2. Check who is on the ASIC Regulatory Portal. Levy notices are issued through the portal, or posted to the registered address. If the registered contact is a former staff member or an old office, fix it now rather than when a notice with a 30-day payment clock is sitting unopened.
3. Model both levies together. The published 2026–27 annual levy of $100 plus $37 per credit representative, plus a special levy at an as-yet-undetermined rate. Run a low case at the annual levy alone and a high case using the MFAA’s $67 estimate.
4. Provision in the FY28 budget, not FY27. On the previous cycle’s timing, the cash leaves the business after the determination, tabling and disallowance period have all run.
5. Review lightly-used credit representative authorisations. This will not change the bill already in train, but authorisation counts in the current metrics year set future exposure. Weigh that against the commercial and supervisory reasons those authorisations exist — do not strip authorisations purely to reduce a levy.
6. Keep it out of your BID files. The levy is a cost of licensing. It has no bearing on a recommendation, and it should not appear in the reasoning on a client file.

What to watch next

The consultation has closed, so the next event is the Minister’s determination and the registration of the instrument. Watch for three things: whether the Tier 1 contribution from financial advice moves from $10 million, which the MFAA and the advice bodies have both argued about from opposite directions; whether Treasury publishes the methodology linking allocations to ASIC’s regulatory effort, which is the specific point Pannek has said is not yet clear; and whether the Tier 3 allocation across the 21 retail-facing sub-sectors is redistributed before the determination is made.

Beyond this cycle, the structural question is the one the waterfall framework was designed to answer and arguably has not: whether a sub-sector with no connection to the losses should be a backstop at all, and what happens when the next cohort of claims arrives. The 2026–27 estimate rose $60.6 million between the initial and revised figures on one set of fund failures. There is no reason to assume that is the last revision of its kind.

The practical takeaway

Most brokerages will absorb this. At the MFAA’s indicative $67 per credit representative, a three-representative firm is looking at roughly $200 in special levy, or a little over $400 once the published annual levy is added — an irritation, not a threat. The firms that should pay attention are the ones carrying authorisation counts well above their production: aggregator-adjacent groups, brokerages with a long tail of part-time or dormant representatives, and anyone who grew headcount through 2024–25 and has since contracted.

The strategic point is smaller than the headline percentage and more durable. A cost that used to be rounding has become a line item, it is priced off a metric you set two years ago, and the framework that produced it is designed to be used again. Know your 2024–25 number, model both levies, provision for FY28, and treat the authorisations you carry today as a cost decision with a two-year tail — because that is now what they are.