Chief Justice Allsop of the Federal Court recently imposed on a bank, by consent of ASIC and the bank, civil penalties totalling $10 million for unconscionable conduct in carrying out an inadequate customer remediation process. It highlights the importance of banks and other financial services licensees having in place robust compliance programs and taking prompt and comprehensive action where possible non-compliance is identified. ...

An update on developments in the modern slavery compliance space, with a focus on emerging trends in activism, legislative reform and litigation, and the impacts of COVID-19. ...

The Government announced a simplification to Australia's consumer credit regulatory regime, which has been widely reported as a 'wind back' or 'axing' of the responsible lending obligations (RLOs) under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth) (Credit Act). Learn more from our experts. ...

As the dust settles on a raft of COVID-19 related disruptions to various proposed legislative and regulatory reforms, the Allens team takes stock of the current regulatory reform proposals in the superannuation, funds and insurance sectors which have been mooted for the tail end of 2020 and early 2021. ...

ASIC's Corporate Plan sets out its strategic priorities and actions for the next four years, especially its approach to its supervisory, surveillance and enforcement functions, and how each of those may have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

We said at the outset of this pandemic that financial advice will play an important role in supporting members who are considering whether to access their super early. Alive to that, ASIC recently released a series of measures to facilitate access to financial advice ...

The ACCC's action against Lime demonstrates that businesses must carefully consider what actions may constitute a 'recall', particularly where electronic products are supplied. It also serves as a reminder that product safety issues can be regarded as a breach of the Australian Consumer Law and can give rise to pecuniary penalties. ...

Allens has advocated for reform to the class action regime for many years, including by way of submissions to inquiries conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Victorian Law Reform Commission. We have made a detailed submission to the current inquiry in which we outline our concerns regarding the increasingly entrepreneurial direction of Australia's class action landscape and advocate for (and against) various reforms. ...

WIPO PROOF - WIPO's new service can be used to prove the existence and contents of a digital file at a given time. ...

The decision in ACCC v Kimberly-Clark Australia identifies pleading and evidentiary issues in the ACCC's case, and provides useful guidance for companies about how courts will interpret product representations and what will be considered the relevant 'context' of representations made in marketing ...