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

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

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

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

This article was originally published on The Australian Financial Review. By Michael Vrisakis Australia’s corporate law regime can be compared to a Russian doll, with one or more top-level dolls concealing other dolls. The president of the Australian Law Reform Commission, Justice Sarah Derrington, says there is a “large mass of secret law” made by … Read more

This article addresses the integration of the efficiently, honestly and fairly (EHF) obligation into the risk assessment and breach reporting frameworks of financial institutions that hold an AFSL. Central to this exercise is the integration of the EHF obligation into operational processes, procedures, decision-making and, last but not least, organisational culture. The role of fairness … 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

We have previously written about our 12 principles that apply to the implementation of the new anti-hawking regime (NAHR), as well as some observations on the evolving structure of insurance contracts and distribution resulting from the NAHR. In this article, we make some further observations on the scope of an invitation, consent, causation, and the … Read more