Industry needs to collaborate with regulators: ASIC
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has encouraged the industry to help the regulators better regulate the industry and call them out when improvement is needed.
Speaking at the FSC Life Insurance Summit, Emma Curtis, ASIC senior executive leader – insurers, financial services and wealth group, said: “We have the ‘twin peaks’ model here in Australia, which means we have ASIC as the conduct regulator and markets regulator, and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) as the prudential regulator.
“So, you can see them as bookends to help steer the industry towards consumer-centric outcomes.
“We work very closely together – I probably can’t stress that enough – you probably don’t see it a lot but it happens behind the scenes.
“There is a new legislative imperative for us to share information and to coordinate our work so we’re focused on that at the moment and moving into that overarching regulatory regime.
“What I would do is call on the industry to help us regulate you better collaboratively and call out if we’re not doing that well and could improve.
Suzanne Johnson, APRA general manager - life insurance division, said: “The twin peaks model is very common across the globe and works well, we know at times there can be a grey space between that.
“We do have separate mandates and won’t apologise for that, but at times we will make different decisions when APRA will go in one direction and ASIC has taken a slightly different approach.”
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