In this edition of FSR GPS, we set out some useful tips to help licensees calculate the 30-day reporting deadline under the ASIC breach reporting regime. A licensee is required to report to ASIC within 30 days after it first knows that, or is reckless with respect to whether, there are reasonable grounds to believe … Read more

In July 2023, ASIC and APRA released key materials for consultation, to support the implementation of the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) by the financial services industry. This included the proposed Regulator Rules and the ‘Key Functions’ descriptions for ADIs (Consultation Documents). Our team has made a formal submission on this consultation. While we welcome the … Read more

In this edition of the FSR GPS, we highlight some key principles that can help AFS licensees identify when an immaterial misstatement may: not constitute misleading or deceptive conduct; and therefore, not automatically be reportable as a significant breach to ASIC under section 912DAA of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (Corporations Act). As with our … Read more

Last week, ASIC commenced the first court proceedings alleging unfair contract terms in an insurance contract. The case involves standard form underwritten home and contents insurance contracts issued by Auto & General Insurance Company Limited (Auto & General). On 5 April 2021, the unfair contract term protections in Subdivision BA of the ASIC Act were … Read more

The breach reporting regime continues to give rise to ambiguity for licensees. As we have commented previously, there continues to be a mismatch in breach reporting practices across the industry and ASIC expectations, as well as a divergence of breach reporting practices between licensees. A common area of over-reporting is in the context of reporting … Read more

On 27 October 2022, ASIC released its first publication of information lodged under the new breach reporting regime, Report 740 Insights from the reportable situations regime: October 2021 to June 2022 (Report 740). As readers will be aware, the new breach reporting regime for financial services came into effect on 1 October 2021, seeking to … Read more

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has released its consultation on a new cross-industry prudential standard for operational risk management, CPS 230, which proposes to introduce a range of new requirements on APRA-regulated entities for managing operational risk and enhance existing requirements for business continuity and service provider management. Operational resilience is critical to the … Read more

For some time now, the issue of whether a sales representative can cross-position different insurance policies or financial products through the mechanism of a multi-policy or multi-product discount has been somewhat of a vexed issue – to say the least. In this context, we are referring to a scenario where a client makes an enquiry … Read more