Following on from the reviews conducted by the Parliamentary Joint Committee and the Financial System Inquiry the Government delivered on its promises by releasing an exposure draft of the Corporations Amendment Professional Standards of Financial Advisers Bill 2015 the Bill late last year for ...

ASIC has released a report looking at the way vertically integrated funds management businesses deal with conflicts of interest The report summarises the findings of ASICs recent review of a number of businesses and sets out some good practice recommendations Partner Marc Kemp and Senior Associate ...

The Federal Government has announced that it proposes to strengthen ASICs powers and to increase the severity of penalties civil and criminal that can be imposed on individuals and corporations in line with the ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforces recommendations Partner Rachel Nicolson and Senior ...

A lot has happened since our most recent update The Royal Commission has published the submissions received from ASIC and industry participants on policy questions posed by Counsel Assisting at the end of the financial advice hearings And the small business lending hearings have been held ...

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 ...