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

The Quality of Advice Review contains some very sensible recommendations with respect to financial advice in the superannuation fund setting. Nonetheless, section 3.2 of the Proposals Paper raises the issue of the possible expansion of the concept of intra-fund advice. The following quote is instructive: “Most (although not all) superannuation fund trustees have told us … 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

Public attention on the ways Australian superannuation funds are engaging with the challenges of climate change has never been greater. Media reporting of Australia’s position at COP26, together with concerted advertising by some funds of their sustainability credentials, means that members are more interested than ever about how their monies are being deployed. This interest … Read more

By Scott Donald PhD CFA (External Consultant and Associate Professor – UNSW) Rob Kardashian, Emilio Estevez, Luke Hemsworth, Dannii Minogue, Trevor Chappell.  Sometimes it is hard to avoid being overshadowed by more famous, more glamorous siblings. The covenant in section 52(12) of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 (Cth) (SIS Act) must be feeling that … Read more

Our Financial Services Regulatory team surveys the regulatory landscape for 2022 and identifies themes that we expect to be at the core of regulatory priorities globally over the next 12 months.  On 7 December 2021, HSF published its annual Financial Services Regulatory Outlook report surveying the global regulatory landscape for 2022 which addressed the following … Read more

A by-product of the recent results of the first APRA Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) performance assessment (more on that in our previous article here) is APRA activity to stimulate super “super” mergers. Many super funds, and not just those underperforming, will no doubt be focussed on a range of APRA powers, including the different … Read more