Payday lenders focus of credit issues
ASIC received information about numerous 'systemic' compliance breaches from the operators of dispute resolution schemes since the start of 2015.The report of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's enforcement review taskforce, "Self-reporting of contraventions by financial services and credit licensees", yesterday spelled out the frequency.Since January 2015, 53 such notifications were made to ASIC, the report said.Of these, 14 were confirmed as systemic issues, 23 were confirmed as potential systemic issues and 16 were reports of serious misconduct. Six were accepted as referrals for the commencement of regulatory action, eight were accepted as referrals of information to assist existing investigations or surveillance, three were merged with other reports and 36 were marked as "no further action". The reports covered a wide range of organisations, but most commonly involved payday lenders and finance brokers, the taskforce said.This data helps inform the proposals "for imposing an obligation upon credit licensees to self-report significant or material breaches in lieu of, or in addition to, the current annual compliance certificate requirement for credit licensees."Some of the increased compliance burden could be offset by making compliance certificates less onerous to complete (for example, by removing questioning around the adequacy of the licensee's compliance arrangements), ASIC said.