Undergraduate - UnitLAW4104 - Australian banking law

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Law
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2015 (Day)

Synopsis

Banking law and regulation have been subject to much scrutiny in the last decade, due to technological change and product innovation, increased globalization of financial markets, and the financial crisis of 2007. The result has, perhaps surprisingly, been one not of radical legal and regulatory change, but of largely an accommodation of old principles to new circumstances.

This course aims to provide an understanding of how this has played out in practice together with some discussion of the adequacy of the process and likely future directions.

Core topics will include:

an outline of the banking system and its regulation and associated legal framework
the banker-customer relation, and duties and obligations of the parties
types of accounts and the actions available in relation to them
negotiable instruments and their purposes and uses
electronic banking
consumer protection
secured and unsecured lending
documentary credits.

Outcomes

At the successful completion of this unit, students will:

have acquired a basic understanding of the operation of the Australian banking system;
be familiar with the general principles of law governing the Australian payments system and negotiable instruments;
appreciate the legal relationship that exists between customers and their banks and the duties owed by each to the other;
understand the day to day issues that can arise between banks and customers such as wrongful conversion of cheques, breach of confidentiality, appropriation of payments and recovery of money paid mistakenly;
be familiar with the financial industry ombudsman system and its role in the mediation of banker-customer disputes;
have acquired analytical tools relevant to solving problems arising out of the application of statute and case-law to specific banker-customer transactions;
be aware of emerging trends in bankers' liability especially the impact of consumer protection legislation to banking business.
be able to identify the legal issues respecting the lending practices of banks
have developed an understanding of the nature of documentary letters of credit, their role in international trade and of the regulatory regime relating to them, and of with the relationship between the regime for documentary letters of credits and that relating to demand guarantees and standby credits, and also of the manner in which demand guarantees are utilized in project financing.

Assessment

Compulsory Assignment (max 2000 words) 40%

PLUS

Open book Examination (2 hours plus 30 minutes reading and noting time) 60%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Weiping He

Prerequisites

For students who commenced their LLB (Hons) course in 2015 or later: LAW1111;
LAW1114; LAW2101; LAW1112; LAW1113; LAW2102; LAW2111; LAW2111

For students who commenced their LLB course prior to 2015: LAW1100 OR LAW1101 and LAW1102 or LAW1104; LAW2100 or LAW2101 and LAW2102