Gadens Regulatory Recap – 12 July 2023

This edition of the Gadens’ Regulatory Recap highlights recent developments from ASIC, APRA, AUSTRAC, ACCC and Treasury, and updates on measures including the climate-related financial disclosure regime, de-banking, the ALRC Interim Report C on financial services legislation, and a FAR update. ASIC  ASIC warns super trustees to consolidate duplicate member accounts: On 29 June 2023, […]

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Gadens Regulatory Recap – 27 June 2023

This edition of the Gadens’ Regulatory Recap considers a series of updates from ASIC, APRA, AUSTRAC, ACMA and Treasury exploring a number of significant policy and legislative updates, as well as details on the latest enforcement actions being taken by the regulators. ASIC ASIC invites entities to assess their cyber resilience: ASIC has invited ASIC-regulated […]

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Australian Payments Systems reform – Seven proposed Payment Functions to replace non-cash licensing regime

As part of the Government’s ambitious Strategic Plan for Australia’s Payments System unveiled this month, Treasury also published the Payment System Modernisation (Licensing: Defining Payment Functions) Consultation paper (Consultation Paper). The Consultation Paper invites feedback on the proposed list of defined Payment Functions that would be regulated under the new licensing framework proposed under the […]

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Futureproofing Australia’s Payment System: Unveiling the Government’s Strategic Plan

The Australian Government has released its Strategic Plan for Australia’s Payments System (Strategic Plan). The Strategic Plan follows on from the Treasury’s Consultation Paper released in December 2022 and outlines a raft of proposed legislative and policy changes to the current payments system regulatory framework. The foreshadowed changes are significant and far-reaching and are aimed […]

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Gadens Regulatory Recap

This edition of the Gadens Regulatory Recap considers a series of developments from ASIC, APRA, and AUSTRAC, as well as reviewing the significant developments arising from the release by Treasury of the Strategic Plan for Australia’s Payments System. ASIC ePayments Code: The updated ePayments Code released in June 2022 (Code) required all subscribers to be […]

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Gadens Regulatory Recap

This edition of the Gadens Regulatory Recap considers updates from ASIC, APRA, OAIC, RBA, AFCA, and key legislative updates. We also take a look at the proposed changes to Buy Now Pay Later services and the debanking of Binance in the unregulated crypto space. ASIC  Enforcement: ASIC’s public focus over the past fortnight has been […]

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Gadens Regulatory Recap

This edition of the Gadens Regulatory Recap considers updates from ASIC, APRA, OAIC, ABA and legislative updates, with a focus on key outcomes arising from the Federal Budget. ASIC Design and Distribution Obligations: ASIC released Report 762 Design and distribution obligations: Investment products which found a significant number of product issuers had produced deficient target […]

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ASIC is coming for your responsible managers

A key obligation of an AFSL holder is to maintain the competence to provide the financial services covered by its licence.[1] ASIC refers to this obligation as the “organisational competence obligation.” In order to comply with this obligation, Regulatory Guide 105: Licensing: Organisational competence (RG 105) provides that the licence holder must nominate Responsible Managers […]

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The digital frontier – staying ahead of the crypto curve

We are in an era that many are now describing as the ‘digital frontier’ – where visions of decentralised financial systems (DeFi) and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) run abound with an endgame that intends to shake up the way traditional finance is offered to consumers. On 21 March 2022 the Treasury released its consultation paper […]

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Are you prepared? October breach reporting changes loom

In anticipation of the upcoming breach reporting obligations commencing on 1 October 2021, ASIC has released Regulatory Guide 78 (New RG 78) on Breach Reporting by Australian Financial Services (AFS) licensees and credit (AC) licensees. These new expanded reporting obligations seek to address ASIC’s long-standing concerns regarding the timeliness and quality of breach reporting across […]

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ASIC’s new approach to regulatory investigations: the challenges and opportunities presented by Express Investigations

Under the banner of ‘when pilots become enduring practice’, ASIC Deputy Chair Karen Chester has announced that ASIC will supplement its traditional investigations processes with ‘Express Investigations’ (EI), ASIC’s new and preferred approach to enforcement. Corporate regulatory investigations are often legally and factually complex, high-stakes and process-heavy. Mountains of documents and witness evidence are commonplace. […]

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