The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has published a snapshot of its surveillance work for the first time, which reveals the regulator monitored more than 3,300 providers of financial advice over the past year, dedicating 29 staff members to the surveillance.
According to the chart for the 2011-12 financial year, it takes 1.7 years on average to monitor the top 20 Australian Financial Services Licensees (AFSLs), which are made up of 26 per cent of all advisers in the country.
The next 30 AFSLs (10 per cent of all advisers) are usually monitored for almost four years, ASIC revealed, while the surveillance for the remaining 3,293 licensees is primarily reactive.
"ASIC takes a risk-based approach to surveillance, identifying significant and strategically important gatekeepers within the financial system to analyse," said ASIC Chairman Greg Medcraft.
"Holding gatekeepers to account is an important part of how ASIC achieves its priorities to ensure investors and financial consumers are confident and informed, and markets are fair and efficient," Medcraft added.
The regulator's focus over the 2011-12 financial year was implementing and assisting industry with the Future of Financial Advice law reforms, conducting projects on topical issues such as scaled advice, and developing standards for internal and external dispute resolution schemes.
The staff numbers shown account for all full-time equivalent positions in each team (some of whom are not engaged in surveillance work) and represent a portion of ASIC's 1,800 strong full-time and part-time staff.
The regulator had also revealed details of its surveillance work associated with investment banks, investment managers, superannuation funds, creditors and insurers.
