Compliance Professionals

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) will streamline aspects of the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) to reduce regulatory burden without lowering accountability standards.

Under the regulators’ proposed changes, APRA and ASIC will remove key functions requirements from the FAR regulator rules; raise the materiality threshold for notifying APRA and ASIC of changes in accountability; and no longer require information on accountable persons’ direct reports in accountability maps.

APRA and ASIC estimate that the changes will reduce reporting for all accountable entities and the 4500 impacted accountable people. Further, the changes to accountability maps will at least halve the number of updates entities need to make.

APRA will today also commence consultation on removing all reporting requirements under its fit and proper regime (please refer to APRA’s consultation on governance reforms released today).

ASIC will streamline responsible manager Australian financial services licensing requirements for FAR entities by reducing requirements to submit evidence of competence from October 2026. This change will benefit approximately 2000 current Australian financial services licensees.

APRA and ASIC will consult on the changes and aim to implement them by the end of 2026. APRA and ASIC will also support the Government in its legislative changes to the FAR.

APRA Member Therese McCarthy Hockey said these reforms continue APRA’s commitment to reduce regulatory burden.

“The changes announced today get the balance right, ensuring the benefits of clarified accountabilities are retained in a proportionate way while allowing entities to get on with running their businesses,” Ms McCarthy Hockey said.

ASIC Commissioner Kate O’Rourke said the reforms align with ASIC’s multi-year program of regulatory simplification, with a recent report highlighting ASIC’s progress in making regulation clearer, more accessible and easier to navigate.

“Through our simplification work, we are focused on reducing regulatory burden while maintaining consumer protections, and that is what these reforms achieve,” Ms O’Rourke said.

The measures are part of APRA and ASIC’s contribution to the Government’s Better Regulation reforms, announced in the 2026-27 Budget. The Better Regulation reforms propose changes to FAR legislation, so that entities need only provide accountability statements and maps on request (rather than up front) and have more time to register their accountable persons.

APRA and ASIC’s changes announced today also form part of the Council of Financial Regulators’ broader package of actions designed to reduce regulatory burden and improve how regulators collect, share and use data.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has commenced the final phase of its governance review by setting out updated requirements designed to strengthen governance across banking, superannuation and insurance.

APRA’s requirements around governance and fitness and propriety aim to ensure its regulated entities are governed by leaders with the skills, experience and character needed for today’s challenging risk environment.

APRA began consulting on proposals to modernise its governance requirements in March last year before refining some of its proposals last October. Having engaged extensively with industry, APRA has today published a response to industry feedback as well as an updated draft of CPS 510 Governance for further consultation.

The new CPS 510 is designed to reflect contemporary best practice, establish clear benchmarks and address existing areas of poor practice by:

• strengthening requirements for board governance, conflicts management and the fitness and propriety of directors and executives;
• removing duplicative fit and proper reporting now that Financial Accountability Regime reporting is in place. These changes would mean forms are no longer required to be submitted for 6000 individuals;
• improving flexibility by enabling boards to delegate APRA’s board requirements in other prudential standards, and by aligning governance requirements with other codes and regimes where appropriate; and
• harmonising requirements by combining five existing prudential standards into one and setting consistent governance minimums for all APRA-regulated entities.

APRA Chair John Lonsdale said the new requirements will raise expectations for boards and senior leaders, while also freeing them up to focus on the matters most essential to financial and operational resilience.

“Strong governance is fundamental to the safety, resilience and performance of banks, insurers and super funds. Over a long period of time, APRA has observed that problems at our regulated entities can be frequently traced to poor oversight, unclear accountability or weak challenge,” Mr Lonsdale said.

“At a time of rising economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and where new technologies are rapidly changing financial services, our regulated entities need leaders who can respond decisively and effectively to financial stress and operational disruptions.

“Alongside lifting expectations, we’ve sought to strike the right balance between safety and efficiency. In allowing boards more freedom to delegate lower value compliance matters and reducing reporting, our goal is to ensure boards have capacity to direct their attention to the issues of most importance.”

APRA will consult until the end of August and is inviting feedback on the draft CPS 510, the proposed removal of routine fit and proper reporting, and related definitional changes in Prudential Standard CPS 001 Defined terms.

Feedback from consultation and stakeholder meetings will inform the final standard and related guidance, planned for release in late 2026. APRA expects the new requirements to take effect from early 2028.

The consultation package is available on APRA’s website at: Proposed changes to governance

ASX Limited (ASX) has admitted that its 10 February 2022 market announcement which stated that the CHESS replacement project was “progressing well” was misleading and exposed market participants to the risk of financial harm.

View the full media release.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have published notes from two Superannuation CEO Roundtables, held on 8 and 15 April 2026.

The roundtables were attended by 12 superannuation CEO representatives from a broad cross-section of the industry (see Appendix I in the attachment below for the full list of attendees). Attendees discussed insights from APRA’s inaugural System Risk Stress Test (SRST), as well as broader themes of system-wide risk, operational resilience and regulatory change.

The notes can be found on the APRA website at: APRA and ASIC host Superannuation CEO Roundtables – April 2026

The Federal Court has ordered record penalties totalling $300.2 million against collapsed contracts for difference (CFD) issuer Union Standard International Group Pty Ltd and its former authorised representatives for systemic unconscionable conduct and other contraventions of the law between 2018 and 2020.

View the full media release.

APRA confirms it will implement the reporting template accompanying the response paper on finalising amendments to the capital treatment for longevity products. No industry submissions were received during the consultation process, and the draft reporting template will be implemented without any further changes.

Life companies that elect to use the Advanced Illiquidity Premium (AILP) from 1 July 2026 should contact their APRA supervisor in advance.

The response paper and accompanying reporting template can be viewed on APRA’s website at: Finalising amendments to the capital treatment for longevity products | APRA

ASIC has permanently banned the former responsible manager of Brite Advisors Pty Ltd, Mr Gerard Duffy, from providing financial services, after a finding that ASIC has reason to believe that Mr Duffy is not a fit and proper person.

View the full media release.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has published Chair John Lonsdale’s Opening Statement to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.

A copy of Mr Lonsdale’s statement is available at: Opening Statement to Senate Economics Legislation Committee – June 2026.

Good morning,

This is my first time before a parliamentary committee since taking the role of ASIC Chair on Monday. I want to thank and acknowledge my predecessor, Joe Longo, for his stewardship of ASIC over the last five years. Joe made a significant and lasting contribution to ASIC and our work in serving Australian consumers, investors and markets.

I am joined by Commissioners Alan Kirkland, Kate O’Rourke and Simone Constant, CEO Scott Gregson and Executive Director for Regulation and Supervision, Peter Soros.

ASIC has done a range of important work in recent times. We have strengthened our enforcement stance and taken decisive action against serious misconduct, obtaining record penalties and record sentences, while also advancing key regulatory priorities and helping ensure banks return record amounts to vulnerable Australians.

We drove the landmark ASX inquiry, have significantly contributed to the thinking about public and private markets, and made significant progress with regulatory simplification, highlighting ASIC’s role in helping to enhance productivity and support economic growth.

I look forward to building on this work in the coming years.

Given this is a Budget Estimates hearing I want to give a brief update to the committee on a range of matters, including initiatives funded in last month’s federal Budget. This funding goes to core areas critical to ensuring we continue to engage with everyday Australians while delivering on the key requirements of ASIC.

First, the Government is investing to complete Tranche 2 of the RegistryConnect program to stabilise and uplift ASIC’s business registers. This builds on previous funding and will help us improve online services for company registrations, lodgements, annual reviews, and other transactions, link Director IDs to company records, upgrade registry systems, and implement new functions for company deregistration powers. These registers support millions of everyday decisions including extending credit, verifying a company, entering commercial arrangements or assessing risk.

Second, the Government is investing to strengthen oversight of managed investment schemes. This measure invests in ASIC’s digital capability, improving our tools to access existing non-ASIC government data and enhance supervision of this sector.

While we believe there is no ‘silver bullet’ to these complex issues, better access to data will help us respond to existing and emerging threats, including those highlighted by the First Guardian and Shield matters.

The Government has also committed to funding to improve governance arrangements for registered managed investment schemes and enhance ASIC’s supervision of the sector. 

Third, with respect to the First Guardian and Shield matters that we have discussed with the Committee previously, we have continued a range of intensive work with a view to returning money to investors who have lost funds. We are running an extensive communications campaign to ensure that people are alerted to the issues and encouraging AFCA notifications. We currently have 14 proceedings in the Federal Court against 26 defendants relating to these issues. This includes recent action against Equity Trustees for allegedly failing to meet its trustee obligations and not act in members’ best financial interests when onboarding the First Guardian master fund.

This is the second action we have taken against Equity Trustees and the fifth against a super trustee as part of our investigations. It means that ASIC has now commenced proceedings against every super trustee that made Shield or First Guardian available on its platform. This work to date has resulted in the return to investors of more than $400m.

Fourth, this Committee is often interested in ASIC’s criminal work. We have recently seen significant custodial sentences imposed in a number of matters, including the sentence of Anthony Torre to six years in prison for fraud involving the misappropriation of superannuation funds; Remedy Housing officials sentenced for lengthy prison terms for dishonest offences and the misappropriation of customer funds; and Rodney Forrest, sentenced to 5 years and 3 months for insider trading and procuring others to trade in more than $3m of Platinum Asset Management Limited shares. This was the first outcome for our new specialist insider trading team which investigated and finalised the case within 16 months of the offending.

Finally, ASIC has commenced a preliminary investigation into allegations about the conduct of several registered company auditors at KPMG that came to light after whistleblower claims were first aired in the Parliament. Our focus is to determine whether the conduct sanctioned by KPMG may be a breach of the duties of a registered company auditor and whether each of the registered company auditors have maintained their fitness and propriety in accordance with the Corporations Act.

We look forward to taking your questions.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has finalised a new, more accessible pathway for banks to become accredited to use the internal ratings-based (IRB) approach to calculate credit risk-weighted assets.

The new pathway has the potential to boost competition while still supporting financial safety by incentivising banks to invest in advanced risk management capabilities. The IRB approach allows banks to better match capital to their actual risk, which can reduce their capital requirements and enable more competitive pricing.

The IRB method is one of two approaches banks can use to calculate risk-weighted assets, which determines the amount of regulatory capital they need to hold for credit risk. While the vast majority of banks use the standardised approach, APRA has approved six of the largest banks to use the IRB approach.¹

In a letter to industry published today, APRA confirmed its intention to proceed with plans to make IRB accreditation more attainable for medium-sized banks by making the process more flexible and transparent.

The changes deliver on APRA’s commitment to review and streamline the IRB accreditation process in response to Action 2 of the Council of Financial Regulators’ Review of Small and Medium-sized Banks.

The letter, which includes APRA’s response to submissions, is available at: A new pathway to internal ratings-based accreditation | APRA

Footnotes

¹ Banks accredited to use the IRB approach are the four major banks, Macquarie Bank and ING Bank Australia.

Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson told the Senate Economics Legislation Committee that the ongoing Middle East conflict is creating significant inflationary and growth risks for the global and Australian economies through disruptions to energy supply chains. While Australia’s economy grew by 2.5% over the year to March 2026, Treasury expects growth to slow in 2026-27 as higher fuel costs and broader inflationary pressures weigh on households and businesses. Treasury is closely monitoring the impact on inflation, employment and business conditions, with inflation forecast to peak at around 5% in the June quarter before moderating as supply disruptions ease.

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ASIC has updated its Internal Dispute Resolution (IDR) data dashboard to include complaints open, received or closed between 1 July and 31 December 2025, reflecting the most recent data reported by financial firms.

The update also introduces a new complainant demographics page, allowing users to explore complaint trends by age group, gender and location. Complainant demographic data is not shown at the firm-level.

In addition, a downloadable data file is now available, enabling users to extract and analyse selected complaint metrics for reporting and research. This allows users to benchmark performance against industry and identify trends across reporting periods, products, issues and outcomes.

These enhancements aim to improve the transparency, accessibility and usability of IDR data, supporting ASIC’s objective to strengthen accountability and drive improved complaint handling across the financial system.

Further information is available from ASIC’s IDR data reporting page.

Interactive dashboard

Internal Dispute Resolution data dashboard