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

Our Financial Services Regulatory (FSR) team surveys the regulatory landscape for 2023 and considers the challenges confronting firms and regulators. Firms now face a maelstrom of risks as 2023 comes into view. Economic and geopolitical uncertainty has aggravated already rising interest rates and inflation, causing supply chain issues and increased volatility in the commodities and … Read more

The continuing uncertainty around the provision requiring licensees to provide financial services ‘efficiently, honestly and fairly’ under section 912A(1)(a) of the Corporations Act (EHF provision) comes into sharpest focus against the backdrop of the new breach reporting regime. In this article, we examine some common questions and challenges we are seeing emerge in relation to … 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

On 17 November 2021, ASIC released draft updated guidance on consumer remediation for all AFS licensees, Australian credit licensees and retirement savings account providers. The draft guidance is attached to Consultation Paper 350 Consumer remediation: Further consultation (CP 350). This article considers the key features of the draft guidance with a particular focus on significant … Read more

In this article, we look at how ASIC is reacquainting itself with one of the oldest tools in its enforcement toolkit: the court enforceable undertaking (CEU). ASIC’s new Chair Joe Longo has long signalled since commencing with the regulator in June that the “why not litigate?” enforcement mantra of predecessor James Shipton is a thing … Read more

By M Scott Donald and Ruth Stringer Amongst the measures introduced by the government in its Your Future Your Super policy initiative is a test of the historical performance of each MySuper product in the market.  Trustees whose MySuper product fail the performance test conducted annually by APRA will be required to send to all … 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