The Bill to amend the conflicted remuneration provisions in the Corporations Act for life insurance has been introduced into Parliament a second time and draft regulations have been released for comment However we struggle to know how to describe them because the changes seem to have conflicting ...

Class action risk is changing A new wave of entrepreneurialism by plaintiff lawyers and litigation funders has substantially changed class action dynamics in recent times The 25th anniversary of the class action regime is a good opportunity to reflect on whether in the light of those and other ...

The recent case of ASIC v NSG Services Pty Ltd considers the FoFA best interests and appropriate advice provisions, as well as obligations of licensees. While the facts of the case provide an extreme example of how advisers and licensees can fail to comply with these duties, it also provides some us ...

The Taskforce established by Treasury to consider ASICs enforcement powers released its first consultation paper a few weeks ago on breach reporting We examine the most significant of the Taskforces 12 preliminary positions ...

In his recent Interim Report into Misconduct in the Banking Superannuation and Financial Services Industry Commissioner Hayne makes a lot of the duties of an Australian financial services licensee and an Australian credit licensee to provide financial services or credit activities as the case may be ...

Although the Commissioner says that the Royal Commission is part of the executive and not the judiciary and that he is therefore not able to make any findings of law he comes pretty close in his views in response to Round 2 And in some important respects those views do not correspond with ...

Class action risk continues to increase and is becoming more complex than ever before. Assessing this risk for your organisation is extraordinarily challenging and requires a broad-based perspective of the broader class actions landscape. ...

In his Interim Report, Commissioner Hayne rejected claims that misconduct in the financial services sector was the fault of 'a few bad apples' and did not raise 'broader or systemic concerns. This Insight considers what can and should be done about such systemic issues. ...

Proposed changes to the FSC Life Insurance Code designed to improve standards in product design sales underwriting customer service complaints and claim handling are afoot and the deadline for comments is fast approaching ...

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority AFCA the new one-stop-shop for resolving financial complaints has had a very busy first six months of operation ...