ASIC chairman James Shipton, in the job since only 1 February this year was shown no favours in the banking royal commission, now drawing to an end of the first week of Round 7.Rowena Orr, senior counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, quizzed Shipton late yesterday on a range of topics, starting with the enforcement tools available to him. She established early in her examination that ASIC has a range of reactive and proactive tools to modify behaviour in the financial services industry that he agreed are "designed to punish previous behaviour and deter future recurrence". The list included engaging with industry, include granting and revoking licences and authorisations; providing regulatory guidance; and conducting reviews and issuing reports. She also had Shipton's agreement that he was under-resourced, compared to similar regulators around the world. "We know from the submissions that ASIC made in response to the interim report that ASICs staff numbers and budget have increased relatively modestly," Orr noted."In my own experience, I believe that ASIC is under-resourced compared to some of our peers globally," Shipton responded.Then the mood changed, as Orr asked him about the tone of regular meetings between senior ASIC officials and the board member and senior executives of the entities ASIC is regulating, as part of ASIC's "stakeholder engagement strategy".While he denied any hint of collusion or a softly softy style approach, Shipton did admit that no minutes were taken of these meetings, and often the senior executives were very guarded, and comments were kept to a high level.What seemed to irk Orr, and then Commissioner Hayne the most, however, was the reluctance by ASIC to name any companies, whether they were laggards in the insurance sector, or the subjects of negative case studies and industry reports.This was despite Shipton's agreement that to do so would very likely result in a change in behaviour of the type ASIC desired.Orr: "Do you agree that an important purpose of these reports is to get financial services entities to improve their practices?Shipton: Most definitely.Orr: And do you agree that an entity that is publicly identified as being the worst performer amongst its peers is likely to have a strong incentive to improve their practices?Shipton: I most certainly do.Orr, assisted by Commissioner Hayne were relentless in their questioning, until they had this response from Shipton:"…  I believe that the suggestion that you are making is a good one.  I would also quickly add that what we are doing is at a journey.  We are starting - and we started with this, in my - at least my time at ASIC, we've started with naming more names than we've named before in relation to the relative performance.  The next suggestion, which you are