ASIC overviews licensing registration
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has published a new report with its approach to and assessment of licence applications and professional registrations for the period July, 2016 to July, 2017.
The report titled “Overview of licensing and professional registration applications: July 2016 to June 2017” was aimed at providing greater transparency about ASIC’s regulatory activities and outcomes from its licensing assessments.
It also provided an overview of the regulator’s activity in relation to applications for Australian financial services licences (ASFL), Australian credit licences (ACL), liquidator registration, company auditor and approved self-managed super fund (SMSF) auditor registration.
ASIC reported that within this period it had around over 3,000 of applications under consideration, with 62 per cent relating to AFS applications, 26 per cent relating to Australian Credit licence applications and remaining 12 per cent related to professional registration.
However, only 54 per cent of all applications assessed during this period were approved.
Of those approved, 80 per cent were in a form other than as requested by the applicant, with 76 per cent of these relating to an AFS licence and 24 per cent related to a credit licence.
At the same time, 18 AFS current licences were suspended and 214 AFS licences were cancelled.
Also, the regulator suspended eight credit licenses and cancelled another 405.
ASIC’s acting chairman, Peter Kell said: “ASIC”s licencing and professional registration functions play an important role in ensuring applicants meet minimum standards to perform an activity.
“We are committed to protecting consumers by appropriate scrutiny of licence applications.”
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