ASIC announces results of its strategic review

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced it has completed a strategic review.

The key changes ASIC is making in order to be closer to the market and to take emerging trends into account more quickly are:

• additional investment in market research and analysis;
• the appointment of an experienced External Advisory Panel drawn from a variety of sectors of the economy in order to advise ASIC’s Commission on market developments and potential systemic issues;
• abolition of the four current ‘silo’ directorates of ASIC and replacing them with 17 outwardly-focused stakeholder teams covering the financial economy (e.g. teams for retail investors and consumers, investment managers, investment banks, superannuation funds and financial advisors);
• additional resources directed to the supervision of brokers and intermediaries and to operators of exchange-traded products and to surveillance of exchange-traded markets; and
• a better balance between national and regional initiatives (e.g. more resources into Perth and Western Australia.). 

ASIC will retain its strong approach to enforcement. ASIC will now have six main enforcement or deterrence teams (instead of one large directorate). Each team will be tasked with specific responsibilities such as insider trading, major fraud, and international fraud and teams for other significant misconduct.

ASIC will retain current staff levels of 1600. ASIC will carry out the restructure within its current budget and has not asked the Government for additional resources for the 2008/09 financial year.

The new arrangements take effect from now and will be fully implemented during the next four months.