On 30 July 2025, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) published a speech by its Chair, Joe Longo, at the FSC Symposium ‘Shaping Advice in a Time of Change’. The speech is entitled Forward together: Addressing misconduct in financial services.
The problem
In his speech Mr Longo focuses on the action that ASIC is taking in response to the situation where more and more Australians are being persuaded that their superannuation fund is underperforming leading them to transfer their savings into more complex and risky schemes with the end result being that their nest egg is diminished or completely dissipated. As Mr Longo warns that bad actors in this sector could undermine trust in Australia’s superannuation system which is bad for everyone – investors, consumers and industry alike.
ASIC’s response
Mr Longo discusses the work that ASIC is doing to deal with the problem and this includes a recent consumer awareness campaign. He also touches on ASIC’s work over the next year to uplift standards across the industry, including:
- Reviewing platform trustee practices to better understand the steps they have taken to disrupt the high-risk super-switching model.
- Scrutinising advice licensees that are using lead generation services to see how industry practices have changed in response to ASIC’s earlier work in this area.
Mr Longo adds that two of ASIC’s 2025 enforcement priorities are misconduct exploiting superannuation savings and unscrupulous property investment schemes. ASIC has doubled the number of new financial advice-related investigations commenced since last year and almost doubled the number of new investment management investigations.
The role of super trustees
Mr Longo accepts that ASIC cannot address the issues alone as its data collection powers are limited which means that its oversight is too. He therefore calls on super trustees to undertake increased due diligence of new investment options before making them available to investors. Mr Longo suggests that superannuation trustees must have strong quality controls for their approved products list. ASIC also expects super trustees to review their processes to ensure new members are not being exploited by super-switching business models. ASIC considers that processes should be in place that allow super trustees to identify practices that may result in the erosion of super balances, including from inappropriate advice fee charges. Similarly, a licensee who has engaged the service of a sales referral source, should have in place adequate monitoring and supervision arrangements to detect concerning conduct and to make sure their advisers are acting in the best interests of their clients.
Areas for reform
In the final part of his speech Mr Longo describes certain key areas which may benefit from reform and this includes conflicts of interest, higher standards for key gatekeepers in the system – the research houses, financial advisers, super trustees, and responsible entities of managed investment schemes – and fixes for long-running issues in the managed investment scheme sector (particularly data collection).
Some key questions in ASIC’s focus include: Are financial and professional indemnity requirements adequate? Do we need to place limits on what superannuation can be invested in? Should we demand more of superannuation trustees and responsible entities? Do we need to place restrictions on retail investments in high-risk funds? Is the current retail client definition still ‘fit for purpose’? Or do we have to slow down the process of rolling over superannuation and creating an SMSF?