ASIC to ratchet up surveillance amid new priorities
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The news: The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has pledged to ratchet up its scrutiny of corporates as it released its top strategic priorities on Thursday.
Publishing its Corporate Plan for the next 12 months ASIC looked to emphasise its enforcement record, revealing its work last year had led to 18 criminal convictions and a further 23 people charged for criminal offences.
The numbers: “In the last year alone we commenced around 170 new investigations - an increase of about 25%, and we filed 33 new civil proceedings in the Federal Court - an increase of 27%,” chair Joe Longo said, describing ASIC as being in court “nearly every day of the year”.
As foreshadowed last month, ASIC has prioritised a review of the fast-growing private markets over the next two years, pledging to drive consistency and transparency across those and public markets alike.
Key to that will be greater supervision of financial market infrastructure providers, such as the ASX, monitoring digital assets and decentralised finance, monitoring financial reporting and introducing competition to clearing and settlement.
But the report flags a critical gap: ASIC lacks the authority to collect granular recurrent data across all regulated sectors, despite its expanded enforcement powers.
In the report, ASIC pledged to work with APRA to develop more recurrent data collections, "where possible" and said it would scrutinise how retail financial services and credit entities employ AI and advanced data analytics.
The regulator will also delve into the growing private markets and update policies on carbon-based financial products.
The context: It comes a week after ASIC announced it would sue the ASX for making alleged misleading and deceptive statements about the progress of its CHESS replacement program. On Thursday, the regulator explicitly outlined it would continue to hold the exchange “to account” over its implementation.
More broadly, ASIC ranked its top five priorities in FY25 as protecting consumers, addressing climate change risk, producing better retirement outcomes, advancing digital resilience and safety, and driving transparency across markets.
Other specific measures include reviewing cyber resilience across different industries and deterring greenwashing.
The source: ASIC Corporate Plan 2024-25
