On 13 December 2016 Treasury released a paper seeking feedback on the proposed financial product design and distribution obligations and proposed product intervention powers for ASIC The proposals are intended to create new accountability obligations for product issuers and distributors On one view ...

ASIC has today announced that superannuation fund trustees and responsible entities will have until 1 October 2017 to comply with the updated fee and cost disclosure rules for PDSs set out in ASIC Regulatory Guide 97 and ASIC Class Order 141252 - but only if they comply with certain conditions ...

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 ...

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 ...

Exposure draft life insurance regulations were released yesterday They are a marked departure from the existing conflicted remuneration provisions Now a benefit can only be conflicted remuneration if it could reasonably be expected to influence financial product advice These regulations will create ...

This is a significant week for the life insurance industry with the re-introduction by the Federal Government of a Bill to reform commissions payable on life insurance policies the release by ASIC of findings of its review of life insurance claims and the launch yesterday by the Financial Services ...

Commercial trusts could not operate without limitation of liability clauses however getting a limitation of liability clause just right is very challenging ...

The new Life Insurance Code of Practice has much to recommend it The paragraphs concerning policy design are a case in point But is the Code indeed just a code or does it purport to go further ...

APRA is seeking to improve the role of the Appointed Actuary in general and life insurance companies and has proposed some reforms in a discussion paper released earlier this year ...

Our class actions team recently published our Class Action Risk 2016 report The objective of the report is to look behind the headlines and hype that often surrounds class actions to provide a more holistic and objective assessment of class action risk for our clients This is particularly important ...