ASIC's facilitative approach to end on 1 July
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has declared that the facilitative compliance approach it had taken to Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) changes due to regulatory uncertainty and transitionary issues would end on 1 July.
ASIC Commissioner, Greg Tanzer made the date for the change to its compliance approach clear in an address to an Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia event last week.
"Our current facilitative compliance approach applies until 1 July 2015, but only in relation to the disallowed FOFA provisions, to assist industry in making system changes to comply with the law as it now stands," he said. "It applies where Australian financial services (AFS) licensees have made a good-faith attempt to comply with the law but are unable to do so because of, for example, the need to make systems changes."
"With respect to the disallowed changes, ASIC will take a practical and measured approach to administering the law."
However Tanzer warned that ASIC was still cracking down on misconduct and pointed to the fact that the regulator was continuing "enforce the laws that were not changed as a result of the
disallowance of regulations and enforce other obligations more broadly in the advice space".
"We are taking enforcement action where we see deliberate breaches of the new requirements or failure to make reasonable efforts to comply. Where we find deliberate and systemic breaches we are taking stronger regulatory action," he said.
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