The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking Superannuation and Financial Services Industry is well underway with its first round of public hearings wrapping up less than a month ago By reference to a number of case studies the first round of hearings focused on consumer lending practices In ...

The 2018-19 Federal Budget has introduced a number of proposed superannuation-related changes, with a focus on protecting small balances, young members and existing retirees. ...

The hearings in the Financial Services Royal Commission have been compulsory viewing not only for financial services industry participants and their regulators and professional service providers The hearings have exposed wide-ranging actual or alleged wrongful conduct that has captured the attention ...

ASIC has released its consultation paper on licensing relief for foreign financial services providers proposing a new licensing regime that will be broadly in line with that applied to other AFS licensees, but with relief from some provisions of the Australian Corporations Act and the imposition of ...

The revised exposure draft Bill concerning design and distribution obligations for issuers and distributors of financial products and new intervention powers for ASIC includes some modest yet mostly welcome changes to the December 2017 exposure draft Senior Regulatory Counsel Michael Mathieson ...

The new Australian Financial Complaints Authority is to replace each of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit and Investments Ombudsman in November 2018 ...

Have you been wondering what the Royal Commission will make of the numerous witness statements and vast amounts of other information collected from superannuation trustees in recent times You will find out soon enough But first there are some curiosities from the Round Four hearings to consider - ...

The Government has slowly been changing the superannuation retirement income system with the aim of increasing the range of retirement products available to Australians A number of changes have already been implemented and more are to come with the proposed Comprehensive Income Products for ...

The level of competition in both the electricity and financial services sectors has been closely scrutinised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Productivity Commission While there are fundamental differences in market structures in both sectors the respective commissions ...

In the latest instalment in the attempts to deal with competing shareholder class actions the Full Federal Court has ordered the transfer of four shareholder class actions against AMP to the Supreme Court of New South Wales where a fifth class action is already pending In doing so the court gave the ...