The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced that it will make a legislative instrument granting Australian financial services (AFS) licensees a three-year exemption from financial adviser scheme obligations.
The move comes after the government announced that it would accelerate the establishment of a single disciplinary body for financial advisers, which will displace the role of compliance schemes in monitoring and enforcing the Financial Planners and Advisers Code of Ethics 2019.
Due to this, compliance scheme applicants have withdrawn their applications to ASIC for approval of their compliance schemes – which means the regime will not be able to proceed at this time.
All AFS licensees will be given three-year relief from the obligation in the Corporations Act 2001 to ensure that their financial advisers are covered by an ASIC-approved compliance scheme, and from the associated notification obligations. They were originally required to meet this obligation by January 01.
AFS licensees will still be required, however, “to take reasonable steps to ensure that their financial advisers comply with the code from January 01, and advisers will still be obliged to comply with the code from that date onwards,” the corporate regulator said.
ASIC said it may take enforcement action where it receives breach reports. Licensees do not need to take any action at this time.
