Strata Sense on Unethical Industry Business Practices

Readers may have seen an article recently on ABC News decrying unethical business practices in a large strata management firm.

Sadly, such practices are well known in the industry and are more common than most consumers would expect.

Strata Sense welcomes the spotlight being shone on such practices. We are here to provide a service to be proud of. We believe in transparency and ethical business practices and that informs our day to day decisions as a company.

To give comfort to our owners, we wish to reiterate Strata Sense’s longstanding business practices as follows:

1. We do not retain any insurance commissions for established clients as a rule, and this is the case for 99.5% of our portfolio. Any commissions are either foregone entirely or, more commonly, rebated to the owners. This is in contrast to how the majority of the strata management sector operates. A good resource on this point can be found here,
2. We do not have any business arrangements with brokerage companies to derive revenue from the placement of insurances. We have a panel of brokers that we typically recommend but we do not have any financial incentives to do so and are happy to work with any broker our clients wish. For more information on this practice, we would refer you to the relevant ABC reporting;
3. We do not receive any “kick-backs” for the referral of works related to our buildings;
4. We do not have any corporate connections or financial relationships with service providers such as handymen, cleaners, building managers, or fire safety companies. For full transparency, we do have another corporate entity very transparently named “Strata Sense Services Pty Ltd” that provides a trades compliance service on an optional basis at a low fee to some of our clients;
5. We do not incentivise our staff financially to refer our clients’ business to any other service provider;
6. In respect of debt collection of outstanding levies, we are conscious of financial hardship and discuss the availability of payment plans with our owners at each AGM. To the extent that a lot’s levies become sufficiently aged to warrant collection action, we assist the owners corporation to engage an independent legal firm for that purpose. We have no connections with any such legal firms and receive no inducement for referring them works. If a particular scheme has a view as to the debt collection solicitor to be engaged, we will happily facilitate that.

Strata Sense is proud of our history as a leader in the industry on transparency and ethical business practices. Our owners can rest assured that we have your best interests at heart.