ASIC Enforcement Priorities

Key regulatory focus areas for Australian financial advisers

Gatekeeper Accountability

ASIC continues to emphasise gatekeeper accountability holding AFSL licensees, advisers, and auditors responsible for identifying and addressing compliance failures. Licensees are expected to have robust supervision and monitoring frameworks in place.

Reportable Situations

The reportable situations regime requires licensees to report breaches to ASIC. Failure to identify and report breaches in a timely manner is itself a compliance failure. AdviserCheck helps identify potential compliance issues through comprehensive document analysis.

Fee-for-No-Service Remediation

Following the Royal Commission, ASIC continues to scrutinise ongoing fee arrangements where services were charged but not provided. Licensees must ensure fee disclosure statements are accurate and services are actually delivered.

Advice Documentation Quality

Poor advice documentation including cookie-cutter SOAs, inadequate fact-finding, and missing BID evidence remains an enforcement priority. AdviserCheck directly addresses this by reviewing SOAs against all six compliance layers.

ASIC's Enforcement Priorities and Approach

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) sets annual enforcement priorities that guide its surveillance and enforcement activities. For 2025-26, ASIC's priorities include: poor financial advice and misconduct by licensees, greenwashing and misleading sustainability claims, scams and consumer protection in digital financial services, superannuation trustee misconduct, and market integrity and insider trading.

ASIC has adopted a "Why not litigate?" approach under current leadership, meaning the regulator is more willing to take contested enforcement action rather than settling matters through negotiated outcomes. This has resulted in an increase in court proceedings, larger penalties, and more public enforcement actions. ASIC publishes its enforcement outcomes and priorities annually in its Enforcement Update.

Enforcement Tools Available to ASIC

ASIC has a wide range of enforcement powers under the Corporations Act, ASIC Act, and other legislation. These include: issuing infringement notices (up to $1.1 million for body corporates), accepting enforceable undertakings (where the entity agrees to take specific actions), imposing licence conditions, suspending or cancelling AFSLs or credit licences, seeking civil penalties of up to $15 million per contravention (or three times the benefit derived), and pursuing criminal prosecution for serious offences.

ASIC can also seek disqualification of directors and officers, banning orders against individuals from providing financial services, compensation orders for victims of misconduct, and injunctions to prevent ongoing harm. The Federal Court can impose penalties of up to $15 million per contravention for body corporates (or the greater of three times the benefit or 10% of annual turnover).

Consumer Reporting and ASIC Intelligence

ASIC relies on intelligence from multiple sources to identify enforcement targets, including consumer reports, whistleblower disclosures, industry reports, media monitoring, and data analytics. Consumers can report misconduct or concerns about financial advisers, products, or services through ASIC's online reporting portal. While ASIC does not investigate every individual report, the information feeds into its intelligence gathering and sector monitoring.

If you have been the victim of poor financial advice or misconduct, you should report it to ASIC in addition to lodging a complaint with AFCA. ASIC uses the information to identify systemic issues and patterns of misconduct. Whistleblowers are protected under the Corporations Act and can make anonymous reports to ASIC.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does ASIC investigate every complaint it receives?
No. ASIC triages complaints and focuses its resources on cases that involve the greatest consumer harm, systemic issues, or serious misconduct. Individual complaints are often referred to AFCA for resolution, while ASIC focuses on enforcement against repeat offenders and systemic issues.

How long does an ASIC investigation take?
Investigations vary widely depending on complexity. Simple matters may be resolved in months, while complex investigations involving multiple entities or cross-border issues can take years. ASIC provides regular updates on its enforcement actions through its website.

What is the difference between ASIC and AFCA?
ASIC is the regulator responsible for licensing, surveillance, and enforcement of financial services laws. AFCA is the independent dispute resolution body that handles individual complaints from consumers about financial firms. You should complain to AFCA for individual disputes and report misconduct to ASIC for regulatory action.

Can ASIC force a financial adviser to compensate me?
ASIC can seek compensation orders through the courts as part of enforcement action. However, the most common avenue for individual compensation is AFCA, which can award compensation of up to $1 million ($5.36 million for superannuation complaints).

Enforcement Watch: What ASIC Did Last Year

During 2024-25, ASIC secured 19 criminal convictions, began 38 new civil proceedings, collected $104.1 million in court-ordered penalties and banned or restricted 58 individuals or companies — an escalation of roughly 50% in investigations year-on-year that the regulator itself describes as becoming a "more confident and ambitious regulator."

Individual outcomes tell the story behind those figures:

• A long-running concern came to a head with the Shield Master Fund (2024-25), where ASIC installed receivers before the fund was ultimately wound up over inappropriate advice and disclosure failures.
• Four MWL Financial Services advisers received bans of 4–8 years in 2025 for recommending the fund without regard to clients' best interests.
• Glenda Rogan was banned for a decade in 2025 after directing $14.8 million of client funds into a crypto-based scam.
• A permanent ban went to Barry King (2025) for dishonest conduct, misusing client money and producing false documents.
• Fees-for-no-service remained enforcement-relevant: multiple licensees faced action, including Crown Wealth Group director Andrew Moore, banned over unreported FFNOS conduct.
• And in 2025 ASIC fined licensees including Skye Money and Smart Financial Capital $31,300 each for permitting unregistered advisers to practise.

ASIC has also warned about business models using high-pressure selling and inflated return promises to target Australians' superannuation.

Compiled from the ASIC Annual Report 2025 and ASIC's Financial Advice Update (August 2025).