News

The Consumer Action Law Centre  is pleased to provide a submission in response to Consultation Paper 281 regarding the proposal to establish a Financial Services Panel (the Panel).

Given the apparent success of peer review as a form of co-regulation in Australia and overseas, it seems that the Panel has the potential to improve the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) regulatory outcomes. However, we have a number of concerns about the proposed Panel and we remain hesitant about providing our full support.

Further information about the proposal, including the process and requirements for selection of Panel members and the process for referral of matters to the Panel for consideration, would assist us to provide more detailed comments.

We also note that we have no major concerns about ASIC’s current administrative decision-making process. Single delegate decisions have been of high quality in complex, novel and significant cases without the use of panels. Our main concern about the ASIC administrative decision-making process to date has been that these matters are costly and time consuming, which restricts ASIC’s capacity to take timely enforcement action. We anticipate the proposed Panel will only exacerbate this problem. We are not convinced that the benefits of having a Panel decision would necessarily outweigh the additional costs of doing so.

Read the full submission here [PDF].