Enforcement of the reportable situations regime – Are you ready?
28 November 2023
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28 November 2023
ASIC has announced that one of its key enforcement priorities for 2024 is compliance with the reportable situations regime, previously known as the breach reporting regime.
Introduced in October 2021, the reportable situations regime requires financial services and credit licensees to notify ASIC of potential misconduct by licensees, including significant breaches or likely significant breaches of core obligations, or investigations of the same. The regime is intended to promote the early detection and reporting of significant and/or non-compliant behaviour by licensees.
ASIC considers the regime to be a cornerstone of an effective financial services regulatory structure. The reports are a critical source of regulatory intelligence.
ASIC has observed that compliance with the reportable situation regime is currently too low, with 89% of licensees not reporting against the regime at all. This is despite the bar for reporting now being set very low for certain types of breaches such as those that are 'deemed significant'. As a result, ASIC has signalled an intention in 2024 to adopt a stronger approach to compliance in this area, directing its resources and expertise to ensuring that licensees are complying with their obligations under the regime and enforcing the law where they are not.
Under its 'proactive, strategic and bold' enforcement approach, ASIC has recently commenced a targeted surveillance of those licensees who are not reporting to ASIC as it would expect.
With the reportable situations regime being a key priority, areas of the reportable situation regime that ASIC is likely to focus on include:
It will be interesting to see whether ASIC seek to use enforcement action to clarify licensees' obligations in these areas. ASIC may be particularly interested in testing how licensees have applied the recent changes to RG 78, which sought to clarify ASIC's expectations on the operational application of the reportable situations regime and promote greater consistency in reporting.
Any such action will be taken in a new era of transparency and accountability under the Financial Accountability Regime for banks, super funds and insurers. In the future, we expect ASIC reporting to publicly name outlier licensees across industry, and by or within sectors, particularly where they are unable to demonstrate benchmarked improvement in the time taken from the first instance of an event to:
"ASIC's approach to reporting will evolve over time, as implementation of the regime matures and allows for greater granularity of reporting", ASIC, 10 August 2022.
As ASIC shifts from a facilitative to an enforcement-focused approach to the reportable situations regime, now is the time for licensees to undertake a health check of their reporting processes and consider whether any uplift and improvement is required.
Ensuring you have a comprehensive and robust reporting framework in place will help mitigate the risk of being targeted by ASIC as an outlier.
In particular, consider:
Reportable situations are—and will remain—a critical source of intelligence for ASIC as a leading indicator of emerging systemic industry risk. Coupled with increasing maturity of ASIC's data analytics capability (including the ability to link reportable situations datasets with datasets such as internal and external dispute resolution), together with a renewed focus on accountability in banking, superannuation and insurance through the incoming Financial Accountability Regime from March 2024, more targeted and precise ASIC supervision and enforcement action in the future is inevitable.
Through close collaboration between Ashurst's legal and risk advisory services, we help our clients navigate the reportable situations regime, providing advice ranging from the establishment of a comprehensive reportable situations framework and a register of core obligations applicable to your business activities, to assist in assessing, investigating and reporting events to ASIC. To learn more about what you can do today to ensure you are ready, please reach out to the key contacts below or your usual Ashurst contact.
Authors: Mark Bradley, Partner; Chris Baker, Partner; Samantha Carroll, Partner; Lucinda Hill, Partner; Elizabeth Hristoforidis, Director; Morgan Spain, Partner; and Jennifer Chen, Lawyer
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