ASIC to prioritise referrals from professional associations
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has vowed to be more responsive to reports of wrongdoing reported by organisations such as the Financial Advice Association of Australia.
ASIC deputy chair, Sarah Court has told Senate Estimates that the regulator’s recent restructure would better enable ASIC to respond to reports made by industry associations.
Her answer follows on from complaints from the FAAA and other associations that ASIC had not been responsive to referrals around misconduct with instances of the regulator not even acknowledging receipt of the referrals.
“One of the important new areas we have got in place as a result of the restructure is what I might call a hybrid team that sits in between our regulatory work and our enforcement work and has been tasked with looking at matters coming into ASIC such as reports of misconduct and emerging issues and to work out quickly where those issues should be allocated within ASIC,” she said.
“The idea of that is that we were seeing occasions where matters were moving a bit slowly through ASIC, through the regulatory side and then the enforcement side some time later,” Court said.
“It’s early days but we have a new triage process that sits within that structure and we think we are managing to move matters more quickly and managing to allocate matters where they need to go.”
“We’re certainly aware of issues that have been raised by industry associations about concerns that matters have taken too long in ASIC and certainly the promptness with which we engage and recognise matters which have been referred through to us by industry associations
We want to recognise that those kinds of referrals to us are a significant referral from experts in the area and need to promptly raised in the triage process,” Court said.
Gee, what a revelation from ASIC. It’s a bit like if the fire brigade came out and said after much thought, they’ve decided to respond to 000 calls instead of just using their own internal surveillance techniques to work out if there’s a fire.
I think I just saw a pig flying
The misallocation of resources by ASIC post RC is a travesty. They’ve spent most of their time and resources bringing frivolous lawsuits against businesses and advisers acting in good faith instead of investigating instances of massive fraud. Any remaining time seems to have been spent compiling pointless breach notices that they never look at anyway.
Hayne has a lot to answer for. He may have been well meaning but he clearly didn’t have a sufficient grasp of how the industry works or what the real risks are to both the industry and everyday Australians.
Now it seems, in true Australian style, there’s a push to swing back the other way completely and revert to vertically integrated models run by super funds (most of whom have never shown any ability to run a successful advice business previously). No doubt when that inevitably fails the blame will fall on advisers as always and the cycle will start again.
The headline should be changed to ‘ASIC to STOP IGNORING referrals from professional associations’