ASIC wants BEAR-like powers across the board

ASIC/bear/insurance-companies/

21 November 2017
| By Mike |
image
image
expand image

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has signalled that the insurance industry will be the next sector to be subject to Bank Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) with other sectors, including planning, more likely to be subject to extended ASIC enforcement powers.

Giving evidence before the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into the BEAR legislation, ASIC senior executive leader, Greg Kirk agreed with Queensland Labor Senator, Chris Ketter that ASIC believed the BEAR should be extended to other parts of the financial service sector.

Kirk said that extending the BEAR to other sectors was certainly true of greater accountability for management failure and added that, “given that the BEAR is focused on prudential issues, an obvious next step is insurers, and generally we think that is likely to be a good step in the future”.

However, the ASIC executive also noted the degree to which the BEAR legislation was tied to prudential issues and the manner in which this precluded it being extended beyond prudentially regulated institutions such as banks and insurers.

In doing so, he suggested that ASIC might in future be able to act on executive conduct via increased powers.

“From a conduct perspective – and this is the thing that's being explored through the review of ASIC's enforcement powers – if and when ASIC is able to ban people from management, that's not a barrier,” Kirk said.

He said the conduct obligations and conduct regulation extended beyond prudentially regulated institutions and covered the whole of financial services.

“… we think long-term, from a conduct perspective, there should be increased accountability, not just for the big institutions but across the board,” Kirk said.

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

1 month 3 weeks ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

2 months ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

4 months ago

Entireti has unveiled the new name for the AMP financial advice businesses that it acquired last year....

4 weeks ago

A Sydney financial adviser has been permanently banned from providing any financial services, with the regulator deriding his “lack of integrity, trustworthiness and prof...

2 weeks 6 days ago

Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, has provided further information about the second tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms....

1 week 5 days ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS