Along with the public release of the ASIC Capability Review Report, the Government announced a suite of reforms giving ASIC additional (but targeted) funding and has also sought to remove some of the shackles on hiring it believes may be hindering ASIC’s ability to recruit top talent. At the same time, the Government confirmed that a ‘user pays’ model will be introduced for ASIC’s funding needs from the second half of 2017 onwards.

Class actions have featured frequently in the press in recent years, often with a theme of a developing crisis for Australian business. It is, however, important that class action risk be assessed by reference to objective data rather than the headlines. Having gathered and analysed that data, our report identifies some interesting trends that run counter to some of the typical commentary.

The Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) was amended in 2004 to include an additional obligation for Australian financial services licensees to have in place adequate arrangements for the management of conflicts of interest that may arise in relation to the activities undertaken by the licensees in the provision of financial services. Conflicts were an afterthought, coming a couple of years after the Financial Services Reform Act (Cth) in 2001. At the time, it didn’t seem to be a particularly onerous obligation, and so it has proved. The regulators and various enquiries and committees have criticised financial services providers for letting conflicts of interest get in the way of their customers’ interests, but the Corporations Act obligation to have adequate arrangements for managing conflicts is a poor basis for requiring licensees to put their customers’ interests first’

As the dust settles following the recent federal election, it is a good time to reflect on what we can expect from the re-elected Coalition Government for the financial services sector. There are two main groups of policy proposals that are going to need to get through Parliament. The first is the fairly significant superannuation changes announced in the 2016/17 Budget in May. The second is the series of changes the Government announced in its response to the Financial System Inquiry. This brief article provides a refresher on each of them.

It has taken a while, but out of the dust of an early Federal Budget and double-dissolution election announcement, a new tax attribution regime for ‘Attribution Managed Investment Trusts’ has emerged relatively intact. While the AMIT regime should generally be welcomed as a positive thing for MITs in terms of certainty and flexibility, it remains to be seen whether it will achieve another of its original aims.

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 in an environment in which the press surrounding class actions has often heralded a developing crisis for Australian business.

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.

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 a new class of conflicted remuneration for life risk insurance products that does not depend on the benefit being expected to exert the relevant influence. This will apply ‘in addition’ to the existing definition of conflicted remuneration. Partner Michelle Levy, Senior Regulatory Counsel Michael Mathieson and Managing Associate Simun Soljo look at the draft regulations.

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 Council of its Life Insurance Code Of Practice. Partner Michelle Levy, Managing Associate Simun Soljo, and Lawyer Nicholas Borger report.

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?

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

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 purposes.

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 14/1252 – but only if they comply with certain conditions. Partner Geoff Sanders and Senior Associate Stephanie Malon report.

The Taskforce established by Treasury to consider ASIC’s enforcement powers released its first consultation paper a few weeks ago on breach reporting. We examine the most significant of the Taskforce’s 12 ‘preliminary positions’.

In the latest (and undoubtedly most significant) of its reports into the design of default superannuation arrangements in Australia, the Productivity Commission yesterday released its Draft Report in relation to Superannuation: Alternative Default Models. Partner Geoff Sanders of the Allens Superannuation team reports on how the Draft Report moves the Commission’s thinking forward in relation to how default contributions might be allocated to superannuation products in the years to come.

Class action risk is changing. A new wave of entrepreneurialism by plaintiff lawyers and litigation funders has substantially changed class action dynamics in recent times. The 25th anniversary of the class action regime is a good opportunity to reflect on whether, in the light of those and other developments, the regime is still serving its objectives.

The Senate Economics References Committee is conducting an inquiry into the regulatory framework for the protection of consumers in the banking, insurance and financial services sector.

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, it is a brave new world, on another, it is just more of the same. Which it turns out to be, we think, will depend on what product issuers make of it and what ASIC does with it. Industry has until March 2017 to make submissions on the detail, it is unlikely that more substantial objections to the policies will be successful. The Financial Services Regulation team report.

A consultation paper on the BEAR has been released, confirming the Federal Government’s intention to impose an executive accountability regime on banks and their subsidiaries that follows important elements of current international accountability regimes. You have three weeks to provide your comments to the Government. Partner Michelle Levy, Senior Associate Sarah Burgemeister and Associate Katie Gardiner report.

We recently hosted some workshops in Sydney and Melbourne to discuss the proposed CIPR framework. The outcomes of those workshops were interesting – in some respects surprising – and this article provides a brief report.