ASIC has welcomed the achievement of a major milestone for Australian consumers and small business – the start of Australia’s new financial services dispute resolution scheme, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). More than 35,000 firms operating across financial services, credit and superannuation have joined AFCA, and from 1 November 2018 their customers will have […]
ASIC is today announcing a review of compliance with requirements for Fee Disclosure Statements and Renewal Notices in the financial advice sector. ASIC has received a number of breach reports from licensees which indicate they may have failed to comply with the Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) and Renewal Notice requirements that were implemented as part […]
ASIC has released updated regulatory guides to coincide with the extension of the crowd-sourced funding (CSF) framework to eligible proprietary companies. This starts on 19 October 2018. ASIC has amended its guidance to include proprietary companies and updated requirements for public companies after consulting with those parties that made submissions to Consultation Paper 288 Crowd-sourced […]
ASIC has released a new legislative instrument relating to the professional standards reforms for financial advisers, as announced on 1 August 2018 (refer: 18-225MR). The instrument makes changes to the reporting dates for a number of disclosure obligations in the transition to the new financial adviser professional standards reforms. It also makes minor technical amendments […]
ASIC has issued a new legislative instrument that provides various relief and modifications to the laws in relation to short selling (the Short Selling Instrument). ASIC has also updated its existing guidance in Regulatory Guide 196 Short selling to reflect the legislative instrument. In addition to providing new relief and modifications, the Short Selling Instrument […]
All managed discretionary account (MDA) providers must now have an Australian financial services (AFS) licence, with an MDA-specific ‘dealing by issue’ licence authorisation. From today, MDA providers who do not have the required AFS licence authorisations must cease providing MDAs until they have obtained those authorisations. An MDA is a facility where client portfolio assets […]
In a report released today, ASIC has identified serious, unacceptable delays in the time taken to identify, report and correct significant breaches of the law among Australia’s most important financial institutions. The report REP 594 Review of selected financial services groups’ compliance with the breach reporting obligation examined the breach reporting processes of 12 financial services […]
ASIC has extended to 30 September 2019 licensing relief for foreign financial services providers (FFSPs) to allow them to provide financial services to Australian wholesale clients without needing to hold an Australian financial services licence. The licensing relief that is extended by ASIC is in the following instruments: ASIC Corporations (Repeal and Transitional) Instrument 2016/396 […]
ASIC has taken action to stop several proposed initial coin offerings or token-generation events (together, ICOs), targeting retail investors. As well, ASIC recently stopped the issue of a Product Disclosure Statement for a crypto-asset managed investment scheme. Consistent problems identified by ASIC are: the use of misleading or deceptive statements in sales and marketing materials; […]
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has approved the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) Complaint Resolution Scheme Rules and the Terms of Reference of the AFCA Independent Assessor (IA). ASIC is required to approve material changes to the AFCA scheme under the Corporations Act, 2001. This is a key part of ASIC’s role in […]