{"id":38802,"date":"2017-10-24T11:28:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T01:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=38802"},"modified":"2017-10-25T07:11:08","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T21:11:08","slug":"taskforce-calls-for-boost-to-asic-penalty-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2017\/10\/24\/taskforce-calls-for-boost-to-asic-penalty-regime\/","title":{"rendered":"Taskforce Calls for Boost to ASIC Penalty Regime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Financial advisers could be hit with fines of $126,000 for failing to provide a Statement of Advice (SoA) under new recommendations being put forward by a Federal Government taskforce, which has recommended the penalties available to ASIC be substantially increased.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforce stated in its recently released position paper &#8211; <em><a href=\"https:\/\/treasury.gov.au\/consultation\/c2017-t229819\/\">Strengthening Penalties for Corporate and Financial Sector Misconduct<\/a> \u2013 <\/em>that \u201c&#8230;concerns have emerged in a number of forums that the penalties in the legislation administered by ASIC may not be effective in that they do not reflect community perceptions as to the seriousness of engaging in certain forms of misconduct\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The paper covers all areas currently under the oversight of ASIC, including financial advice, and states that under the relevant sections of the Corporations Act, licensees are obligated to provide a\u00a0Financial Services Guide (FSG) and SoA to consumers.<\/p>\n<p>Failure to do so when required carries a fine of 100 Penalty Units (PU) for an individual and 500 PU&#8217;s for a body corporate.<\/p>\n<h6>\u201c&#8230;concerns have emerged&#8230;that the penalties in the legislation administered by ASIC may not be effective&#8230;&#8221;<\/h6>\n<p>Figures available through the Taskforce\u2019s webpage indicate that an individual PU is $210 and thus current maximum fines are equal to $21,000 for individuals and $105,000 for corporate entities.<\/p>\n<p>In its position paper the Taskforce has recommended these fines be increased to 600 PU&#8217;s ($126,000) for individuals and 6000 PU&#8217;s ($1.26 million) for a body corporate.<\/p>\n<p>Fines for knowingly providing a defective FSG or SoA would also increase from 200 PU&#8217;s ($42,000) to 4,500 PU&#8217;s ($945,000) for an individual and from a 1,000 PU&#8217;s ($210,000) to 45,000 PU&#8217;s ($9.45 million) for a corporate entity.<\/p>\n<p>The paper stated the reason for the high level of this second group of fines was &#8220;&#8230;these disclosure requirements are fundamental obligations designed to protect consumers&#8221;. It added that knowingly providing defective documents to consumers was comparable with providing false or misleading statements to financial markets.<\/p>\n<p>The Taskforce will <a href=\"https:\/\/treasury.gov.au\/consultation\/c2017-t229819\/\">continue to accept submissions<\/a> on the paper until 17 November 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Financial advisers could be hit with fines of $126,000 for failing to provide a Statement of Advice (SoA) under new recommendations being put forward by a Federal Government taskforce, which has recommended the penalties available to ASIC be substantially increased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[4247],"class_list":["post-38802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-compliance-regulation","category-general","tag-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}