ASIC moves on bank surveillance

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has signalled that it is moving towards conducting surveillance to determine whether major banking institutions are offering employers inducements to change default superannuation funds. 

The regulator made its intentions clear to a Parliamentary Joint Committee in response to questions about an Industry Super Australia survey which claimed to show that such inducements were being offered. 

However ASIC commissioner Tanzer said that while the regulator was aware of the survey and had interrogated Industry Super Australia about its findings, it had not been possible to determine whether it had succeeded in identifying any actual breaches. 

"The research itself asked questions online and of some 550 employers about whether they had had any engagement with the bank that provides their general business services and whether they felt that there had been discussions about changing their default super arrangements and whether any inducements had been offered," Tanzer said. "The survey did not identify any particular breaches of section 68A. It was not designed--well, whether it was designed to or not, it did not identify any particular breaches and it was not conducted at a level of particularity that allowed it to do that." 

VIEW ALL

View all

Tanzer then went on to tell the Parliamentary committee that ASIC was expecting to do some work jointly with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and "probably some work directly ourselves on some surveillance directly with some representative entities in the superannuation industry just to understand what type of programs they have going around seeking to attract default funds and what controls they have" 

He said that ASIC expected that out of such an exercise there might be other information that came forward "from whistle-blowers and the like".