Herbert Smith Freehills partners Charlotte Henry, Peter Jones and Peter Dunne, along with consultant Tony Coburn have authored the Australian chapter of The Legal 500: Fintech Country Comparative Guide – a publication which provides a pragmatic overview of the law and practice of fintech law across a variety of jurisdictions. The chapter covers topics such as payments, … Read more

On 19th May 2021, the Senate Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre published their third issues paper. This issues paper talks to one of the revised terms of reference that were added to the Committee’s terms on 18th March 2021, namely opportunities and risks in the digital asset and cryptocurrency sector. … Read more

On 28 April 2021, the Senate Select Committee on Australia as a Technology & Financial Centre (previously known as the Select Committee on FinTech & RegTech) released its Second Interim Report. The Second Interim Report addresses digital assets and the need for a policy framework as well as regulatory issues concerning the consumer data right. … Read more

The Final Report of the Financial Services Royal Commission called for a follow-up review into the ethics and standards in the financial services sector. In response to this, on 21 April 2021 at the FSC Life Insurance Summit, Financial Services Minister Jane Hume announced that the Government will commission a review of the financial advice … Read more

In December last year we wrote of the sweeping changes to Australia’s breach reporting regime that had been passed into legislation by Federal Parliament and would have significant implications for Australian financial services and credit licensees (AFS Licensees and Credit Licensees respectively). We summarised the key changes and highlighted issues for licensees to look out for in preparing for the regime … Read more

This edition of our ‘FSR GPS’ (Guidelines, Principles and Strategies) series covers the upcoming changes to the anti-hawking regime for financial products in the Corporations Act, with the new regime coming into effect on 5 October 2021. In this article, we outline: our 12 legal principles which go to the heart of the new anti-hawking … Read more

Operational resilience is the next phase in the evolution of financial services regulatory policy. We approach this resilience at a conceptual level, identifying 5 elements which make up a holistic operational resilience framework: Financial resilience – capital, liquidity, prudence; People resilience – governance, accountability, culture; Structural resilience – clarity of operational and legal structures; Regulatory … Read more

In this article, we address a cryptic pillar of the current Banking Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) and the proposed Financial Accountability Regime (FAR): the obligation to deal with APRA and ASIC in an open, constructive and cooperative way. What would this obligation require? What would it not require? How can we prepare for it? In … Read more