Mathias Cormann critical of ASIC on shadow shop data


The Federal Opposition has expressed concern that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) provided only preliminary data to a Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) on its latest financial planning shadow shopping exercise and was unable to deal with the specifics.
The shadow Assistant Treasurer and Opposition spokesman on Financial Services, Senator Mathias Cormann, said he believed the use of the preliminary data by ASIC in the midst of a politically-charged debate was inappropriate.
"ASIC made assertions about the implications of their data for the FOFA Bills, yet were not able to answer any questions about the detail," he said.
"In any event, ASIC's unverified headline data didn't prove anything when it comes to the contentious bits in FOFA," Cormann said.
Senator Cormann's concerns followed Money Management's report today that the ASIC data presented to the PJC reviewing the FOFA bills was preliminary and that key stakeholders such as the Financial Planning Association and the Association of Financial Advisers had received barely 24 hours' notice of the regulators intentions.
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