Regulatory news

US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins and 2025 Nobel prize-winning economist Joel Mokyr are among a range of international experts who will address ASIC’s upcoming symposium, ‘The Asia Pacific opportunity – Innovating for growth’.

Tickets are now available for the event, which will bring together financial services, markets and technology leaders.

The symposium will follow the Asia-Pacific meetings of IOSCO and with the European Commission, meaning securities regulators from across the world will join other experts including the Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority Verena Ross at the symposium in Sydney.

ASIC has banned Melbourne-based financial adviser Neil McPherson from providing financial services, controlling an entity that carries on a financial services business or performing any function involved in the carrying on of a financial services business for four years.

ASIC found that Mr McPherson gave inappropriate advice to certain clients which was not in their best interests because he recommended clients invest most of their superannuation into the High Growth class, the Growth class or the Balanced class of the Shield Master Fund which were high risk investments, during the time he was authorised by MWL Financial Services Pty Ltd.

ASIC has reason to believe that Mr McPherson is not a fit and proper person, is not competent and is likely to contravene a financial services law.

The banning order took effect from 5 February 2026.

Mr McPherson‘s banning has been recorded on Banned and Disqualified Register.

Mr McPherson has the right to appeal the decision to the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Australian fixed-income specialist, FIIG Securities Limited (FIIG), has been ordered to pay $2.5 million in pecuniary penalties after ASIC brought a case against the firm for failures to protect thousands of clients from cyber security threats for more than four years.

FIIG’s failures worsened a 2023 cyber-attack which saw around 385 gigabytes of confidential information stolen and highly sensitive client data leaked onto the dark web – including driver’s licences, passport information, bank account details and tax file numbers.

FIIG notified some 18,000 clients that their personal information may have been compromised.

FIIG admitted that it failed to comply with its Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence obligations and that adequate cyber security measures – suited to a firm of its size and the sensitivity of client data held – would have enabled it to detect and respond to the data breach sooner. It also admitted that complying with its own policies and procedures could have supported earlier detection and prevented some or all of the client information from being downloaded.

The Federal Court today ordered FIIG to pay a $2.5 million penalty and pay $500,000 towards ASIC’s costs. The Court also ordered FIIG to undertake a compliance programme involving the engagement of an independent expert to ensure its cyber security and cyber resilience systems are reasonably managed.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has reduced liquidity add-on requirements imposed on Macquarie Bank Limited in 2021 and 2022.

APRA took action against Macquarie Bank following material breaches that revealed weaknesses in the bank’s liquidity risk controls and operational risk management.

In April 2021, APRA required Macquarie Bank to increase its Net Cash Outflow (NCO) overlay by 15 per cent in the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) calculation and reduce the Available Stable Funding (ASF) by 1 per cent for its Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) calculation. APRA also agreed a remediation plan with the bank to address the identified weaknesses.

After further NCO calculation errors were identified, linked to control weaknesses, APRA increased the NCO overlay by an additional 10 per cent in April 2022, bringing the total overlay to 25 per cent.

Following a detailed supervisory assessment, including a Financial Accountability Regime attestation from Macquarie Bank outlining the progress of its remediation and independent assurance, APRA has now concluded that the bank has remediated aspects of liquidity risk management and reporting controls that affect the NCO and ASF calculations to a level that supports a partial removal of its liquidity add-on requirements. Consequently, the NCO add-on has been reduced to 15 per cent and the ASF adjustment has been removed. These changes take effect immediately.

The remaining NCO add-ons will remain in place until APRA confirms that all outstanding remediation activities are completed and effectively embedded. This is separate to the $500m operational risk capital overlay, which is subject to its own remediation activities and remains unchanged.

In the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, the National Anti-Scam Centre has released its final quarter scams statistics, showing an increase in romance scams reports and losses across 2025. The data highlights the need for Australians to talk to family and friends about the tactics scammers use to build trust and steal money.

Romance scams remain one of the most financially and psychologically damaging financial crimes in Australia, with more than $28.6 million in financial losses reported to Scamwatch between January and December 2025. This represents a 21.8 per cent increase in losses experienced by 1,330 Australians.  Scammers overwhelmingly contacted people through online methods, such as social media; dating platforms and online forums with online contact responsible for more than 80 per cent of financial losses.

ACCC Acting Chair Catriona Lowe said criminals use carefully rehearsed tactics designed to build trust quickly and shift conversations toward requests for money, gifts or personal information.

“Romance scammers operate all year round, but the lead up to Valentine’s Day is a good time to have a heart-to-heart with loved ones and build awareness of how these scams work so we can help people better protect themselves and others,” Ms Lowe said.

“Criminals exploit technology, trust, and emotion for financial gain. Reporting suspicious activity to Scamwatch and sharing what you know can stop them from causing further harm and protect others.”

People are encouraged to access resources on Scamwatch to provide support to loved ones who may be targeted by scammers, including red flag signs, conversation starters and the manipulation tactics deployed by scammers.

ASIC is taking further steps to support thousands of Australians who invested in the Shield Master Fund (Shield) and First Guardian Master Fund (First Guardian), which have collapsed.

So far, less than 2,000 of around 11,000 Australians who invested approximately $1.1 billion in Shield and First Guardian have lodged complaints with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), prompting ASIC to take further action to ensure investors understand the impact.

From tomorrow (Friday 6 February 2026), ASIC will begin sending further information to investors, including a link to a dedicated consumer website that contains trusted and independent support, and options to make a complaint: takeyoursuperback.com.

The new consumer website has been independently developed by Super Consumers Australia with funding from ASIC. Super Consumers Australia is an independent consumer advocacy organisation that is helping consumers impacted by the collapse of First Guardian and Shield understand what they can do.

The website provides First Guardian and Shield investors with guidance and resources to help navigate next steps including:

• how to lodge a complaint with AFCA to seek compensation, including deadlines for submitting complaints
• how to access support services if they are experiencing financial hardship or need someone to talk to

Consumers should visit takeyoursuperback.com for further information and details on how they can make a complaint to AFCA.

To date, around 4,000 consumers have benefited from approximately $421 million in payments from Macquarie and compensation from Netwealth as part of court enforceable undertakings agreed to by ASIC as part of its investigations into Shield and First Guardian.

ASIC’s investigations into Shield and First Guardian continue. Nearly 50 people across ASIC are working across 26 investigations, which are among the largest and most complex cases in ASIC’s history.

AUSTRAC has developed guidance for your industry to help you understand your obligations under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) laws.

Today’s decision by the Administrative Review Tribunal relating to Bunnings Group Limited’s use of facial recognition technology (FRT) is an important reiteration of the key principles and protections contained in Australian privacy law.

The Tribunal affirmed the Privacy Commissioner’s finding that Bunnings contravened Australian Privacy Principles (APP) 1 (open and transparent management of personal information) and 5 (notification of the collection of personal information) when rolling out FRT in its stores.

The Tribunal found that Bunnings failed to provide appropriate notice to individuals of its use of FRT and should have completed a ‘formal, structured and documented’ risk assessment of its FRT system which considered the privacy implications.

The Tribunal also affirmed the Privacy Commissioner’s statement of the relevant factors when considering whether Bunnings was entitled to rely on an exemption to the requirement to obtain consent for the collection of personal information, namely whether the FRT was a suitable and effective response to the problem of repeat offenders, whether less privacy-intrusive alternatives were available, and whether the use of FRT was proportionate.

However, the Tribunal departed from the Privacy Commissioner’s ultimate finding that Bunnings had contravened APP 3.3 (collection of solicited personal information).

The Tribunal was satisfied that Bunnings was entitled to rely on exemptions to the requirement to obtain consent, for the limited purpose of combatting retail crime and protecting their staff and customers from violence, abuse and intimidation within their stores.

Sydney-based stockbroking firm Petra Capital Pty Ltd (Petra Capital) has been fined $205,350 by the Markets Disciplinary Panel (MDP) for misreporting regulatory data on more than 3,600 occasions.

Following an ASIC investigation, the MDP found Petra Capital breached the market integrity rules by failing to provide accurate information, being a unique code used to identify clients executing orders or transactions.

Petra Capital’s inconsistent use of client reference information when reporting regulatory data led to one client appearing as multiple clients on 3,632 occasions. This was caused by a system update and affected 14,741 trades between 3 March 2022 and 5 December 2023.

The MDP considered Petra Capital to be ‘careless’ and found that it should have taken steps to ensure its reporting format complied with the law, including by proactively and periodically reviewing its systems and the underlying assumptions in its coding.

ASIC is urging immediate action from superannuation trustees to strengthen anti-scam and fraud practices after its latest review exposed significant gaps in communications for members.

ASIC assessed scams and fraud-related website content across 47 superannuation funds, benchmarking them against comparable website content from the big four banks (ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, and Westpac).

The review focused on the availability, quality and actionability of anti-scams and fraud content, including by checking the website content for clarity and relevance, prominence on the website and readability. ASIC’s review found banks scored positively in over 80% of criteria assessed, whereas most super funds scored positively against just 40–60% of the same criteria.

ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said despite being custodians of $4.3 trillion in Australian retirement savings, the superannuation industry has been slow to respond to evolving scams and fraud risks to members.