Allianz investigating historic compliance issues
Allianz chief risk officer, Lori Callahan, today admitted to the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry that the insurer had about 150 open compliance matters under consideration that may need to be referred to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The firm was also looking back through past compliance issues to see if anything should have been reported to the regulator but was not.
Discovering such a failure to report would also be uncovering a breach of section 192D of the Corporations Act however, as section 192 requires that any “significant”, even if only "potentially significant", breach be reported to ASIC within 10 business days.
Callahan did not know how many historic issues Allianz was investigating however, in a day of testimony characterised by the witness often being unable to answer the Commission’s questions.
“I’m a little surprised that you can’t give me any indication of the size of the task,” Commissioner Kenneth Hayne QC told Callahan at one point.
Callahan said that Allianz was “at the start” of introducing appropriate compliance practices. This year, for example, it had already made seven breach reports to ASIC, outstripping its previous average of one report annually.
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