Market integrity and misconduct

In response to Opposition calls for a Royal Commission into the banking sector, the Australian Government has announced a $127 million reform package aimed at increasing the powers of Australia’s corporate watchdog, ASIC. A key component of that package will be the accelerated implementation of two key recommendations of the Financial System Inquiry: an obligation…

Government releases its Response to FSI Final Report.

The Australian Government has released its Response to last December’s Final Report of the Financial System Inquiry or ‘Murray Inquiry’.

The Government appears to have accepted almost all of the Inquiry’s recommendations and has also proposed additional measures that are consistent with the Murray Inquiry’s underlying philosophy.…

Conducting investigations into allegations of regulatory breaches, fraud or corruption can present serious legal and commercial risk if privilege cannot be asserted over the findings of those investigations. That risk may be compounded if boards choose to conduct such investigations in-house, often with compliance managers or in-house counsel reporting the findings of those investigations directly…

On 10 June 2015, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) released the final version of its Superannuation Prudential Practice Guide SPG 223 – Fraud Risk Management (SPG 223) following consultation with industry conducted in October 2014.

As with other prudential practice guides released by APRA, SPG 223 is a non-binding document…

We are on the cusp of a new era in the evolution of the financial services industry.

New technology, data analytics and behavioural economics are promising to revolutionise the customer experience.

If the regulators remove the regulatory barriers, then using multi-media to deliver mandated and voluntary disclosure in different formats and through different devices will…

Technology led innovation can cause much indigestion for conduct and prudential regulators as they try to find the right regulatory pigeion hole for innovators in their regimes that were not built to handle such innovation.  It is this disruptive impact of innovation that is shaping the regulation of tomorrow.

Numerous conduct regulators around the world…

Financial Institution Symposium 

Technology-led innovation has the potential to truly disrupt existing business models and distribution channels in the financial services industry.

In Australia and more broadly, we have seen start-ups build innovative payment systems, peer-to-peer lending platforms, crypto-currencies, robo-advice and automated investment management.

However, the large institutions are well capitalised, have large customer bases…

For the second time ever, the Australian Federal Police have laid bribery and corruption charges against directors of an Australian company. Unlike their regulator counterparts in the US and UK, the AFP have until now, been very reluctant to exercise their anti-bribery powers, but with a reported further 14 active foreign bribery investigations at the…

ASIC has recently released its quarterly enforcement report detailing enforcement outcomes between 1 July 2014 and 31 December 2014.  The report addresses the range of criminal and civil action taken by the regulator, and highlights action taken against companies and directors resulting in criminal charges which were most significant during the period.

In addition, significant…

On December 18, 2014, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (“CFTC’s”) Division of Clearing and Risk (“DCR”) issued extensions of previously granted “No-Action” relief to four foreign clearing organizations. The relief allows these foreign clearing organizations to continue to clear swaps for certain United States persons (“U.S. persons”) without being registered as a derivatives clearing organization…