Supervision Guidelines – Record Keeping

Over the last couple of months we have been explaining some of the changes to the Supervision Guidelines to ensure that all Licensees-In-Charge know and understand their responsibilities as licensees.

The Supervision Guidelines have had a major overhaul and were released on 23 March 2020 when the new Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 took effect. However, one of the key rules within these guidelines has not changed and that is rule number 10:

10 RECORD KEEPING
10.1 – A licensee in charge must maintain records showing evidence of:
10.1.1 regular reviews of operational procedures, and
10.1.2 any non-compliance with the operational procedures by persons engaged in the business
10.2 – A Licensee-In-Charge must be able to produce all documentation relevant to clauses 1-10 of these supervision guidelines to an authorised officer in accordance with section 105 of the Act.
10.3 – All records relevant to clauses 1-10 must be kept for at least 3 years.

It is essential for a Licensee-In-Charge to maintain records and their policy and procedure manuals for their business that relate to:

1. Changes to Licensee-In-Charge including start and end dates of each Licensee-In-Charge;
2. Operational procedures;
3. Trust account procedures;
4. Identification checks for the purpose of preventing fraud;
5. Ongoing dealings with a party/parties to an agency agreement;
6. Underquoting, selling price and other representations;
7. Compliant handling procedures;
8. Employee supervision; and
9. Gifts and benefits register.

Whilst it is essential for the records to be kept as outlined above, it is also a requirement that should an authorised officer (NSW Fair Trading) request to inspect those records, they must be made available. This is set out in section 105 of the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 which states:

105 INSPECTION OF LICENSEE’S RECORDS

1. A licensee’s records are at all reasonable times open to inspection by an authorised officer
2. An authorised officer may require a person who has possession, custody or control of a licensee’s records:
   a. to produce the licensee’s records for inspection,
   b. to furnish all authorities and orders to financial institutions as may be reasonably required of the person.
3. If a licensee is absent from an office or place of business of the licensee, any employee or agent of the licensee for the time being having the apparent control or charge of the office or place of business is taken to have possession, custody or control of the licensee’s records at that office or place of business.
4. An authorised officer may take copies of or extracts from, or make notes from, any licensee’s records produced to the authorised officer under this section and for that purpose may take temporary possession of those records.

Purchase the ACOP Supervision Guidelines Performa – https://acop.edu.au/supervision-guidelines/