Has talk of a royal commission turned the ASIC Capability Review into an unlikely catalyst for an enhanced enforcement agenda With Labor pushing hard for a royal commission into the banking and financial services industry and an election looming the Government moved swiftly to announce broad reform ...

The ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforce members and terms of reference have been announced The terms of reference are very broad and come as no surprise with an emphasis on evaluating the adequacy of ASICs enforcement toolkit We analyse the key themes that are likely to emerge ...

A director of a bank life company or general insurer who read APRAs recent information paper on risk culture could be excused for indulging in a wry smile Since mid-2015 he or she has been subject to legislative obligations concerning risk culture However the information paper suggests that APRA is ...

ASIC and APRA often cop flak from various quarters including from us and so today for something different we train our sights on the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK What the FCA has said about providing personal advice to retail clients is interesting debatable and likely to induce a strong ...

At the same time as more international issuers appear to be looking at international programme formats for their Australian dollar issuance so Australian borrowers are contemplating the use of EMTN programmes even for their domestic currency issuance ...

As regulatory and political pressure increases on the major banks in Australia alternative credit providers are entering the market with a variety of products to attract borrowers The unitranche loan is an example of one such product Partner Warwick Newell Senior Overseas Practitioner Alex Tonkin ...

New legislation in Queensland that implements a range of reforms for leasehold land has been passed and will commence on a day to be fixed by proclamation The reforms will provide greater security of tenure for rural leaseholders and are likely to make such leases more attractive to investors ...

Earlier today ASIC released an updated version of Regulatory Guide 246 concerning conflicted remuneration and other banned benefits such as volume-based shelf-space fees The changes are largely to address the life insurance remuneration reforms which take effect on 1 January 2018 But there are other ...

Earlier today Treasury released exposure draft regulations for Innovative Superannuation Income Streams They set out income stream standards that will be relevant for products such as deferred annuities and group self-annuitised products The Allens Superannuation team reports ...

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 ...