ASIC urged to be specific

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has been told it needs to be more specific when providing case studies of conflicts of interest.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) has called on ASIC to include more specifics in the case studies it is proposing to include in regulations dealing with conflicts of interest.

In a submission to ASIC responding to the regulator’s discussion paper dealing with managing conflicts of interest in the financial services industry, ASFA expressed concern that the examples used by ASIC were “very simple and not practical in addressing often highly complex business situations”.

The submission, developed by ASFA’s director of policy and research Dr Michaela Anderson, said many of the examples were, in the first instance, a breach of a specific requirement of the law, rather than about management of conflicts.

“The loosely based case studies used have the potential to become benchmarks imposed on the industry by regulators and auditors for a ‘one size fits all’ approach, which should not be supported,” the submission said.

ASFA said rather than case studies, ASIC should be providing more specific guidance on how the principles might be implemented in practice.