ASIC trying to ‘systematically’ remove unlicensed advice providers

Appearing before the parliamentary joint committee on corporations and financial services on Friday, ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court discussed enforcement matters enacted in the criminal court.

Court was asked by Senator Deborah O’Neill to identify the “baddies” of the industry who were being taken to court for criminal matters over the last three months.

“They span a huge range from the most sophisticated, educated people down to the opportunistic mum and dad directors who find themselves in a situation on the wrong side of the law,” she said.

“Our job is to make sure whether you are at the big end of town or a smaller player, that ASIC is there. There is a long list of people being held to account for engaging in alleged misconduct.”

Drilling down further into the enablers of alleged misconduct, she said it is particularly looking at providers of unlicensed or unregistered advice.

“Who are the people or companies that are effectively providing unlicensed or unregistered advice that is allowing companies to phoenix or dispose of assets?” Court said.

“That’s an example where we are proactively doing work. We are getting the data and information from liquidators to feed into our data sources, so we can look into and target who are the people enabling this work.

“We do a lot of proactive work with our data streams and with other agencies to try to systematically pick out those problematic entities. Unfortunately, they keep reinventing themselves, and it’s a whack-a-mole approach where as soon as we remove them from the system, then others emerge, but we are very active in that area.”

Appearing before Parliament in the previous week in a separate appearance, Court said ASIC is exploring whether there are concerns regarding Macquarie and Equity Trustees for hosting Shield Master Fund on its platform.

ASIC commenced court action against Keystone Asset Management as the responsible entity for Shield in June 2024 and obtained an order for freezing of the assets to preserve Shield’s monies and managers, and receivers were appointed. Subsequently, voluntary administrators were appointed.

She said: “Where this relates to Macquarie is that consumers who invested their superannuation in Shield Master Fund did so through two superannuation platforms. One of those was hosted by Macquarie and the second was hosted by Equity Trustees.

“We are looking at whether there is any conduct of concern regarding Macquarie and Equity Trustees in regards to their facilitation of those very significant investment sums through those platforms.”