The Government has today released exposure draft legislation and regulations intended to create an enhanced regulatory sandbox to support innovation in financial services. As announced in the 2017-18 Budget, the FinTech regulatory sandbox will allow a broad scope of activities to be tested without the need to meet all the existing licensing requirements of the […]
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) can pursue a range of regulatory and enforcement sanctions and remedies to respond to misconduct that occurs in the corporate, financial market or financial services sectors. Concerns have emerged in a number of forums that the penalties in the legislation administered by ASIC may not be effective in […]
ASIC has released the finalised ASIC Client Money Reporting Rules 2017 (client money rules) which, from 4 April 2018, will impose record-keeping, reconciliation and reporting obligations on Australian financial services (AFS) licensees that hold ‘derivative retail client money’ within the meaning of the Corporations Act, unless the client money relates to a derivative that is […]
The Government is introducing legislation to the Parliament today to extend crowd-sourced equity funding to proprietary companies. As part of this Bill, proprietary companies wanting to access equity crowdfunding will no longer have to convert to a public company entity. Instead founders will be able to crowdfund while retaining the greater flexibility of the proprietary […]
From 29 September 2017, the new crowd-sourced funding (CSF) regime will come into effect and ASIC will begin accepting licence applications from CSF intermediaries. Under the CSF regime, eligible public companies will be able to make offers of fully paid ordinary shares to a large number of investors via the online platform of a licensed […]
The ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforce has issued a position paper titled ‘ASIC’s power to ban senior officials in the financial sector’. In its final report, the Financial System (Murray) Inquiry concluded that ASIC’s banning powers against individuals needed to be enhanced to improve accountability of managers and the culture of firms in the financial services […]
The Government is seeking public comment on the proposed core legislative frameworks to give effect to the Asia Region Funds Passport (Passport) and introduce the Corporate Collective Investment Vehicle (CCIV) regime. This legislation seeks to implement arrangements set out in the Passport’s Memorandum of Cooperation between signatories Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Thailand. The […]
ASIC has remade Class Order [CO 04/899] Definition of ‘senior manager’—modification which was due to expire (‘sunset’) on 1 October 2017. The new instrument, ASIC Corporations (Disclosure Relief—Offers to Associates) Instrument 2017/737, continues to provide disclosure relief for an offer of securities to a director or secretary. The relief was remade following public consultation via […]
In March 2017, ASIC conducted a review of various mobile app stores focusing on apps associated with binary options trading. The review highlighted over 330 apps which were offered to Australians by entities and individuals that appeared to be unlicensed. 63% were offered by binary option issuers and facilitated trading, 25% were from various signal […]
The Government is continuing to overhaul the dispute resolution framework for financial services in Australia with the creation of a transition team to lead the establishment of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). The transition team has been tasked with ensuring that AFCA, the new one-stop-shop for all financial and superannuation disputes, is operational by […]