ASIC-Commonwealth FP report tabled

The Senate has tabled its final report into the performance of ASIC relating to a string of advice failures at CBA dealer group Commonwealth Financial Planning.

The report contains 61 recommendations, most notably including that a royal commission be held into the behaviour of financial planners at Commonweath Financial Planning as well as ASIC's handling of the matter.

Tabling the report, Senate Economics References Committee chair Mark Bishop said ASIC "appears to miss consistent and clear signs of corporate wrongdoing, putting investors at risk".

"To be blunt, the committee found ASIC wanting," said Mr Bishop.

"[ASIC] allowed itself to be lulled into complacency, while corporate wrongdoers continued to abuse their clients’ trust," he said.

Between 2006 and 2010, the management of CBA were "negligent" and "ignored wrongdoing", said Mr Bishop.
"Both ASIC and CBA seem to put reports of fraud in the too-hard basket," he said.

"There was inordinate delay in CBA recognising that advisers in Commonwealth FP were delivering bad advice," said Mr Bishop.

ASIC was "too slow in recognising the serious problems at Commonwealth FP", and "ASIC didn’t pay enough attention to whistleblowers", he said.

CBA "deliberately played down the seriousness" of the behaviour of Commonwealth FP planners in an attempt to limit scrutiny from both the public and ASIC, said Mr Bishop.

More to come.