ASIC has acknowledged it was aware prior to the Royal Commission that AMP was allegedly attempting to mislead the regulator according to Financial Standard.
Appearing before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics in Canberra today, senior leaders at ASIC admitted they were not surprised by the revelations about AMP publicised via the Royal Commission.
ASIC chair James Shipton said the issues raised at the Royal Commission are the exact issues the regulator has been investigating for some time now.
Acknowledging sensitivities around commenting on ongoing investigations, Shipton said: “What I will say is that those matters identified by way of AMP testimony at the Royal Commission was known to us. We have an ongoing investigation that includes those matters and there is a very limited amount I can say more, other than we were not surprised at all by the confronting matters.”
Committee deputy chair Matt Thistlethwaite pushed further, asking why the regulator didn’t make its findings public in the best interests of consumers, particularly AMPs tens of thousands of customers.
ASIC senior executive leader, financial services enforcement Tim Mullaly responded: “We are subject to confidentiality and are also acutely aware that the announcement of an investigation – even if they are later found to have done nothing wrong – can have detrimental effects on entities and people.”
Mullaly then acknowledged ASIC had been provided with the now-infamous Clayton Utz report in October 2017 – six months before it was revealed by the Royal Commission – leading Thistlewaite to question why ASIC had allowed AMP’s board members to continue in their directorships if it was aware of the many alleged breaches and attempts to mislead, including the mischaracterisation of the report as independent.
ASIC deputy chair Peter Kell said confirming or suggesting that the law had been broken by individuals was “going a little too far for us.”
“I think there’s a couple of things to keep in mind, one being that we have a substantive investigation ongoing as to the underlying issues there, which are deliberate conduct around fees for no service and deliberately misleading ASIC,” Kell said.
The provision of the report and the characterisation of it as independent hasn’t been a significant part of ASIC’s investigation, he added.
Mullaly said ASIC should be in a position to finalise its investigation into AMP “after September”, saying about half a dozen staff are working on it.
“There’s only so much we can say and the sanctity of the process is very important. The ability for our teams to investigate thoroughly, diligently and appropriately is of paramount importance to us, but I will give you my assurance that we at the commission are taking this matter with the utmost seriousness,” Shipton added.
