Keeping it verbal: Why a behavioural report on ASIC management is not available
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) retained the services of behavioural experts to report on its leadership team, but a Parliamentary Committee has been told that the outcome must remain private to the ASIC commissioners assessed.
The behavioural experts within consulting firm Egon Zehnder observed executive meetings of ASIC’s leadership team and interviewed the commissioners, with the stood-aside chair, James Shipton, telling the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services last year that the firm was expected to provide feedback in the form of a report.
The chair of the Parliamentary Committee, Victorian Liberal Senator, James Paterson asked whether the report could be provided to the committee in the context of this week’s hearing during which it traversed the reasons why Shipton and his deputy chair, Daniel Crennan, had stood aside over expenses issues.
Apart from a question on notice, Senator Paterson also put the issue to ASIC’s acting chair, Karen Chester during this week’s hearing.
However, ASIC’s formal response to the Senator’s question on notice was that the Egon Zehnder report had been verbal.
“The overall findings were provided by the specialist provider, Egon Zehnder, verbally in a full-day workshop with commissioners on 12 December, 2019. Individual feedback reports were provided prior to that workshop to respective commissioners,” the formal ASIC response said.
“Those reports are of a nature (as contemplated by Senator Paterson in his question to the chair) not requiring production to the committee because they related to individual performance feedback.”
Recommended for you
Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones has shared further details on the second tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes reforms including modernising best interests duty and reforming Statements of Advice.
The Federal Court has found a company director guilty of operating unregistered managed investment schemes and carrying on a financial services business without holding an AFSL.
The Governance Institute has said ASIC’s governance arrangements are no longer “fit for purpose” in a time when financial markets are quickly innovating and cyber crime becomes a threat.
Compliance professionals working in financial services are facing burnout risk as higher workloads, coupled with the ever-changing regulation, place notable strain on staff.
