Commercial agents perform duties such as debt collection, process serving and repossession of goods. The NSW Government is introducing new standards of conduct for the commercial agent industry while removing unnecessary and costly red tape.

With the introduction of the Fair Trading Amendment (Commercial Agents) Act 2016 (the Amendment Act), responsibility for the regulation of commercial agents is being transferred from NSW Police to NSW Fair Trading.

We have drafted the proposed Fair Trading Amendment (Commercial Agents) Regulation to support the Amendment Act, including licensing requirements and standards of conduct.

The Commercial Agent Rules cover these standards of conduct, such as trust account obligations, handling complaints, and contacting people only during appropriate hours.

The Regulation also covers the:

• reasons a person may be disqualified from performing the duties of a commercial agent or deemed not fit and proper to be licensed
• details relating to the registration of commercial agents.

For more information, see the:

• Regulatory Impact Statement
• Draft Regulation
• Amendment Act

Tell us what you think

Whether you’re a commercial agent, a consumer or have any other interest in these laws, we want to hear your feedback.

To have your say, simply complete our quick survey. You can also upload a written submission. Your feedback will help us improve the regulation of the commercial agent industry and protect consumers.

Submissions close Sunday 7 November 2021.

Thank you for your feedback

This engagement is now closed. Thank you to participants for providing your input and ideas.

To see the responses, read the consultation submissions and the survey response report.

Visit the NSW Fair Trading website to find out more about how commercial agents are regulated in NSW

Privacy collection notice

This consultation is for NSW Fair Trading, Department of Customer Service.

Have your say consultations are run by the NSW Department of Customer Service (McKell Building, 2-4 Rawson Place, Haymarket NSW 2000).

We are interested in hearing from the community and will use the information we collect from you to help develop the programs and services that NSW Government provides.

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Having your say is voluntary and you are not legally required to provide any personal information to us. For some consultations, though, you will not be able to have your say unless you agree to include your personal information.

If you do provide personal information to us, you have a right to access it, and can ask us to correct it if it is wrong.

We may share personal information you provide with other parts of the Department of Customer Service (for example, with our Data Analytics Centre) so that we can conduct analysis across all consultations and refine our engagement methodology.

Where we conduct a consultation on behalf of a partner agency, we would usually share the information that we collect with that agency. Partner agencies for each consultation are listed on the webpage for that consultation.

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You can contact our Privacy Coordinator by calling 13 77 88 or by emailing privacy@customerservice.nsw.gov.au.