The Finance Sector Union has called on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to impose a blanket ban on volume-based reward payments to bank staff for selling credit insurance policies to customers.FSU national secretary, Julia Angrisano, yesterday said staff employed in bank branches were under "intense pressure" to sell credit insurance to customers."We are calling for a ban on variable reward payments linked to sales targets on credit insurance products," she said."We know from feedback from our members that staff feel intense pressure to sell credit insurance to customers even when they don't need it." The union's call for a ban came after ASIC announced that the four major banks had agreed to adopt a deferred-sales model for credit insurance sold with credit cards in branches and over the phone.Under changes accepted by the banks, consumer credit policies will no longer be marketed to borrowers when they sign up for a new credit card.Banks will have to wait up to four days after a new customer applies for a credit card before they can begin marketing an add-on credit insurance product."This reduces the risk that a consumer will feel pressured to purchase the consumer credit insurance product, or purchases a product that does not meet their needs," said ASIC deputy chair, Peter Kell. A working group, comprising representatives from ASIC, the Australian Bankers Association and consumer advocates, will develop new measures for managing how credit insurance is sold with credit cards over the internet.Kell also revealed that the regulator was once more investigating the past practices of banks in relation to the selling of consumer insurance. This is a perennial topic, although big banks have, via the deferred model, staved off more drastic action.Consumer credit insurance was one of seven core topics considered by Stephen Sedgwick in his review on product based payments for the Australian Bankers Association.With Sedgwick, as with ASIC now, there was no call for a heavy hand as demanded by the union."There is not sufficient evidence of significant systemic risks of poor outcomes for customers to support an outright ban on all product based payments in retail banking," he wrote in his final report. "If we find instances of mis-selling, we will take further action," Kell said yesterday.The union's agitation for more stringent supervision of how banks market credit insurance reflects the emerging importance of banking re-regulation to the next round of enterprise bargaining in the sector.Negotiations for a raft of new industrial agreements have stalled this year as the union and the major banks wait to see the how the recommendations of the Sedgwick Review are likely to operate. Future enterprise agreements struck between the big banks and the union will have to take account of ASIC's standards on retail banking remuneration before new performance pay arrangements can be ratified by the Fair Work Commission.The Australian Bankers Association earlier this year announced that all of its members were committed to shifting from existing sales-base reward structures for frontline staff to new incentive pay models that reduced