The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has made clear that financial planners and Self Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSFs) will be front and centre on its radar over the next 12 months.
As well, the regulator has signalled that planners and others whose names have appeared in breach reports or allegations of misconduct will be particularly on that radar.
The regulator made its position clear in evidence to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, with ASIC chairman, Greg Medcraft telling the committee that ASIC's strategic outlook document, to be published within weeks, would have three big areas of focus within respect to consumers and investors "financial advisers, self-managed superannuation and some areas of responsible lending in credit."
"But overall in terms of the risks, the key risks we have identified, they actually come down again to what we have always talked about, which is the issue of globalisation, which affects across a number of areas; it comes down to innovation-driven products and markets and technology—what goes around—and again what is happening in terms of structural change with the growth of super, particularly the growth of self-managed super and some of the issues that are coming out of that, and then, on top of that, obviously the issue about mis-selling of particular products," the ASIC chairman said.
Senior ASIC officers had earlier told the Parliamentary Committee that the regulator was now making greater use of the data it collected to pursue issues, including breach and misconduct reports.
Further it said that it received around 10,000 misconduct and breache reports in the last financial year and about 5,000 breach reports from financial services licence holders.
"We have received 8,000, I think, statutory reports from liquidators and auditors. All of those are entered into our database, assessed, considered and recorded and then that information is available to us effectively throughout, so when we get more information we can then cross-match that through our database and then identify whether we have heard about the person before, if there have been other issues that ASIC has actioned before, and all those types of things," a senior officer said.
