The ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforce position paper was released yesterday, descriptively titled 'ASIC's power to ban senior officials in the financial sector'.  The Taskforce was established by the Turnbull Government in October 2016, following the Financial System Inquiry final report. One response has been the setting up of a Banking Executive Accountability Regime. The BEAR Consultation Paper was released in July 2017 and proposes to expand the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority's powers to administratively disqualify a person from being a senior manager, director or auditor. This latest paper expands on the thinking behind the Turnbull Government's proposed Banking Executive Accountability Regime, aiming to improve the accountability of managers and the culture of firms in the financial services and credit sectors in front of ASIC, alongside, as the FSI had suggested.  The BEAR position paper proposed that APRA be allowed to disqualify an 'accountable person' who does not meet the new expectations of the Banking Executive Accountability Regime.  ASIC also has the power to ban individuals from providing financial services in certain circumstances, including where they have contravened Australian financial services laws.  The position paper considers potential shortcomings in ASIC's banning powers that have been outlined in a range of contexts, including the Financial System Inquiry and the earlier Senate report on the Performance of the Australian Securities Investments Commission.  The FSI identified the key problems as:  ASIC can prevent a person from providing financial services, but cannot prevent them from managing a financial firm. ASIC cannot remove individuals involved in managing a firm that may have a culture of non-compliance. The Taskforce said it has considered this issue and believed the first point could be adequately addressed by expanding the scope of the banning order, so that ASIC should have a power to ban a person from:  performing a specific function in a financial services business, including being a senior manager, or a controller of a financial services business; and/or performing any function in a financial services business. The second problem goes to the limitation on the circumstances in which ASIC is empowered to make a banning order. That is, the existing provisions may give the result that a director or senior manager of a financial services business, who has been shown to be unfit to fulfil their role, cannot be subject to an ASIC banning order.  This could even be the case, for example, where the individual concerned is employed in a financial services business that is found to have serious systemic compliance failures over a period of time. The position paper is available on the Treasury website. "Interested stakeholders are invited to comment on the positions put forward by the Taskforce," the minister's media release noted, adding that submissions for this consultation close on 4 October 2017.