ASIC ‘lifts its game’ on DDO

The Design and Distribution Obligations (DDO) regime is increasingly becoming a cornerstone in ASIC’s supervision and enforcement arsenal. In the latest, on 18 May 2023, ASIC announced that it had made 8 new interim stop orders preventing the issue of derivatives including contracts for difference (CFDs) to retail clients because of deficiencies in their target … Read more

ASIC commences first court action on unfair contracts terms in insurance

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

HSF FSR Practice launches a Breach Reporting Hotline

It’s time! We are excited to launch our brand new (and what we think is Australia’s first) ‘Breach Reporting Hotline’ service, which enables you to ‘bounce’ discrete queries off our team of experts as a way of cutting through some of the complexity that is intrinsic to this new regime. For more information, please see … Read more

FSR GPS: ASSESSING CRIMINAL OFFENCE PROVISIONS FOR ASIC BREACH REPORTING

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

FSR OUTLOOK 2023: BRAVING THE MAELSTROM

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

Insurance in superannuation: AFCA complaints directly against life insurers – A thing of the past?

The Decision Yesterday’s decision of the Full Federal Court in MetLife Insurance Limited v Australian Financial Complaints Authority Limited [2022] FCAFC 173 upheld MetLife’s contention that AFCA does not have jurisdiction to hear complaints made directly against life companies relating to life insurance in superannuation. The issue arose due to a specific complaint which was … Read more