Banking badly
The major financial services regulators are becoming more vocal and taking more onerous action, citing increasing complacency on cultural and compliance issues.
Regulators have had enough. Barely six years after a damning Royal Commission — which ended the careers of a number of CEOs, senior executives and chairs — the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Reserve Bank are again ramping up actions and rhetoric.
Whether it is compliance failings with ANZ or Macquarie Group, inadequate compliance plans for managed funds or even commitment to modern payments technology, the regulators are losing patience with an industry that seems to be moving on from what they see as ongoing issues.
Not only are they taking actions, including court proceedings and enforceable undertakings, they are being much more vocal in directly criticising the institutions and their executives and boards.
After ASIC last month announced proceedings against Macquarie for 14 years of inadequate reporting of short selling, the latest in a series of compliance and regulatory issues at the investment bank, ASIC chair Joe Longo told Capital Brief the “picture that we think has emerged from all of this is a broad complacency about their compliance, a kind of hubris.”
