56% of brokers say BID improved trust in the sector — ten times the share reporting harm. The catch is evidentiary: compliance is proven mainly through broker records.
Best Interests Duty commenced on 1 January 2021 under the National Credit Act, alongside conflicted-remuneration reform. Deloitte's 2025 survey asked brokers what it actually did to their businesses, netting positive against negative responses.
- Customer trust: net +50%
- Recommendation quality: net +45%
- Financial performance: net +20%
- Workload: net +5%
56% of respondents reported the changes improved trust in the sector — ten times more than reported negative impacts. Notably, BID applies to brokers and not to banks or lenders, which the report describes as a genuine value proposition and marketing asset for the channel.
The reform package brokers now operate under
BID sits within a wider set of reforms codified after the Banking Royal Commission: the conflict priority rule, net-of-offset upfront commissions, clawback provisions that cannot be passed to customers, a ban on volume-based and campaign-based payments, restrictions on soft dollar benefits, and an expanded reference checking protocol from July 2024. Design and distribution obligations and ASIC's RG 271 internal dispute resolution regime commenced in October 2021, with bi-annual complaints reporting to ASIC.
Where the operational burden landed
"Evidence of compliance with the best interests obligations will come mainly from broker records."
That single sentence defines the practical cost of BID. The duty itself is uncontroversial for a broker acting properly; the exposure is evidentiary. If the options presented, the rationale for the recommendation, and the ongoing contact are not recorded contemporaneously, the file cannot demonstrate what actually happened.
The quality dividend is real
The complaints data supports the trust finding. Mortgage brokers and aggregators consistently accounted for under 1% of banking and finance complaints to AFCA between FY20 and FY24, with combined complaints falling from 133 to 80 — around a 40% reduction — while complaints about banks fell 2%. In FY24, brokers attracted fewer than four complaints per 1,000 brokers.
Source: Deloitte Access Economics, The Value of Mortgage and Finance Broking 2025, prepared for the MFAA (February 2025); AFCA (2024).