Course

Law of Banking - JURD7333

Faculty: Faculty of Law

School: Faculty of Law

Course Outline: See below

Campus: Sydney

Career: Postgraduate

Units of Credit: 6

EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)

Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 3

Enrolment Requirements:

Pre-requisite: 36 UOC of JURD courses for students enrolled prior to 2013. For students enrolled after 2013, pre-requisite: 72 UOC of JURD courses.

Excluded: LAWS3133

CSS Contribution Charge: 3 (more info)

Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule

Further Information: See Class Timetable

View course information for previous years.

Description

Law of Banking provides an introduction to the practice of banking and to relevant principles. The course is concerned with the relation of banker and customer and with instruments, processes and transactions commonly met in that context. Central to a traditional view of the subject are the
rights and duties of bankers and customers. The course will fall into two parts, with the first covering banking regulation and important banking principles, and the second providing an overview of common banking products and the issues to which they give rise. The first part of the course will include material on key regulators such as APRA, ASIC and the RBA, the banker-customer relationship and privacy, while the second part will consider consumer banking, electronic banking and lending and fund raising techniques used by banks and their customers. It will also address bills of exchange as foundational financial instruments, but will only briefly cover issues particular to these instruments.


Recommended Prior Knowledge

No expertise is required beyond that in compulsory law subjects: Contracts and Torts will be found to be of particular relevance.

Course Objectives

The objectives of the course are to acquaint students with the rationale for competition law, and give them an understanding of key statutory provisions and case law to provide practical understanding of banking law and policy.
Students will be required to develop a working understanding of the areas of law and transaction patterns to which they are introduced in this course. In addition, students will be expected to consider and respond to criticism of subsisting law and transaction techniques.

Learning Outcomes

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

1. Demonstrate a comprehension of the principles of banking law and its relationship to banks and customers.
2. Demonstrate an awareness of law and practice in a banking context.
3. Engage in critical analysis of the practice of banking law from a range of perspectives.
4. Organise information as it relates to the regulation of banking products and services and the issues to which that information gives rise.
5. Write in a timely and effective manner as evidenced by a concise writing style that makes use of the information available to analyse, synthesise, critically judge, reflect on and evaluate its application, and carry out legal and inter-disciplinary research using legal citations.
6. Self-manage through self-assessment of capabilities and performance with the integration of previous feedback, to discuss and debate course concepts in a scholarly, reflective and respectful manner.

Main Topics

  • Introduction – the banking industry in Australia today, the Wallis Report and the four pillars policy
  • Financial services regulation
  • The banker – customer relationship
  • Privacy and the banker’s duty of confidentiality
  • Australian financial services licences and Australian credit licences
  • Secured and unsecured lending
  • Loan sales - negotiation, novation, assignment and participation
  • Securitisation, derivatives, project finance, syndicated lending
  • Consumer banking and the Code of Banking Practice
  • Electronic banking and the ePayments Code
  • Negotiable instruments, bills of exchange and cheques
  • The future of banking – some of the challenges facing banks and banking regulators (coverage will depend on available time)

Assessment

Online quiz - 30%

Research Essay outline - 10%

Research Essay - 50%

Class Participation - 10%

Course Texts

  • McCracken, Bird, Stumbles and
  • Tolhurst Everett & McCracken’s Banking & Financial Institutions Law, 8th edn, ThomsonReuters, 2013

Recommended
Refer to Course Outline provided by lecturer.

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Study Levels

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