ASIC

Financial planning

DDO changes to remove nil complaint requirement

The Government is seeking to make amendments to the design and distribution obligation regime including removing the requirement for advisers and licensees to report whet...

Financial planning

Litigation still on the cards for ASIC

The corporate watchdog’s chair, Joe Longo, has no plans to let up on the body’s litigation commitment despite pulling back on the public emphasis his predecessor had plac...

Policy & Regulation

ASIC chair probed on governance review of regulator

The corporate regulator’s new chair, Joe Longo, believes that reading the publicly available report of the regulator’s governance practices is sufficient and has not aske...

Financial planning

Group faces 72 criminal offences after alleged phoenix activity

Four associates and a lawyer have been charged with criminal offences after Members Alliance and Benchmark groups collapsed with the corporate regulator alleging the grou...

People & Products

Govt appoints inaugural FRAA board

Former Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore will be chair of the authority that will oversee the corporate and prudential regulators....

Financial planning

Market downturn could ‘burn’ first-time investors

While it is great to see retail investors investing in the stockmarket for the first time, a sharp market downturn could put them off the market for good, warns Airlie....

Policy & Regulation

Advice makes 20% of ASIC 1H enforcement outcomes

None of the outcomes resulted in criminal proceedings, and there is a similar percentage of ongoing cases by the corporate regulator....

Superannuation

CFSIL liable for misleading super members

The Federal Court has found that it made false or misleading representations to members to avoid them moving to the MySuper product....

Policy & Regulation

Bulk upload reports for breach reporting allowed

To reduce the reporting burden, the corporate regulator is allowing licensees to batch upload reports that derive from a single root cause as part of the new breach repor...

Policy & Regulation

Why penalties can’t fund the ASIC levy

If the corporate regulator had funds awarded by penalties put into the financial advice levy it could look like a new revenue stream aimed at players with deep pockets....

Financial planning

Advice industry moving into ‘financial aid’

The advice industry is turning into a structure where only the wealthy can afford advice and digital offerings will only create more corruption, according to a financial ...

Features

InFocus: Is TikTok advice any better than ‘the man down the pub’?

While finfluencers are on the rise and targeting younger investors, this presents an opportunity for advisers to help investors separate the information from the noise, w...

Policy & Regulation

DDO won’t absolve conflicts of interest

Product issuers and distributors need to be careful with what incentives apply to distributors who sell products to those target customers, according to EY....

Financial planning

Advice industry still owes ASIC $2.4m for FY2019-20

The corporate watchdog has said there was an outstanding amount of $2.4 million unpaid by the financial advice sector on its total regulatory cost of $59.59 million durin...

Superannuation

ASIC to go hard on super funds that overpromise

The corporate regulator will act if it sees false, misleading or deceptive conduct in member disclosures of all super funds – not just those that failed the performance t...