It has been confirmed that the financial planners appointed to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Financial Services and Credit Panel will be expected to sit in judgement and help determine banning orders against their fellow planners.
The degree to which the planner members of the panel will be involved in this activity has been outlined in ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 263 (RG263) released this week, which clearly states the role the planners will play alongside ASIC personnel in sitting in judgement on their peers.
It said sitting panels would be responsible for a subset of ASIC’s administrative decisions, namely for determining whether ASIC would make a banning order against individuals for misconduct in the course of providing retail financial services and/or engaging in certain credit activities where the matter is appropriate for peer review because of its significance, complexity or novelty.
However, the Regulatory Guide makes clear that not all banning orders will be referred to the panels – only the ones which ASIC deems are worthy of peer review. Further, a planner being targeted by ASIC for attention will not get to choose whether they appear before a panel.
The regulatory guide states that when deciding whether the banning matter is appropriate for peer review because of its significance, complexity or novelty, ASIC will consider the following relevant factors:
(a) current areas of ASIC’s regulatory priority;
(b) the potential impact of the banning order on industry practices;
(c) legal or factual complexity; and
(d) new areas of market practice or regulatory oversight for ASIC.
