Australia

Enforcement

ASIC Files Federal Court Suit Against AMP Companies

By Editors | 30/05/2021

ASIC has taken court action against AMP for charging deceased customers insurance premiums and advice fees. AMP has already remediated the impacted customers.

Enforcement

ASIC Files Criminal Charges Against ME Bank

By Editors | 29/05/2021

ME bank made “false or misleading” representations in home loan customer communications and failed to give timely notice of changes to the loan terms.

Market Infrastructure

Westpac Becomes First Aussie Major to Issue SOFR Debt

By Editors | 28/05/2021

The bond issuance included a $300mn floating-rate bond tranche maturing in five years that was priced at a 52 basis point spread over SOFR.

AML / KYC

AFP, AUSTRAC Probe Payments via Adult Content Site – Report

By Editors | 28/05/2021

Banks and regulators are unable to establish who receives the payments via UK-based platform OnlyFans, which acts as an intermediary for content makers.

Market Infrastructure

LIBOR Transition in Cash Markets Remains Slow: ASIC

By Manesh Samtani | 28/05/2021

Only 14 percent of post-cessation date loans have robust fallbacks in place, said ASIC’s Nathan Bourne at a Bloomberg-ICMA webinar.

Enforcement

UPDATE: Former Adviser Jailed for Six Years in Australia

By Ranamita Chakraborty | 27/05/2021

Former adviser Ross Andrew Hopkins misappropriated about A$2.9mn of client funds without their knowledge over three years.

AML / KYC

RBNZ Takes Court Action Against TSB Bank for AML Failures

By Editors | 27/05/2021

The court action and pecuniary penalties sought are a result of TSB Bank not responding sufficiently to the RBNZ’s initial formal warning in 2016.

Market Infrastructure

ASIC Proposes Updates to Modernise ePayments Code

By Sanday Chongo Kabange | 25/05/2021

ASIC proposes to add flexibility to the code to allow it to tailor data requests based on priorities and issues of concern.

Crypto / Digital Assets

Australia: Senate Committee to Probe ‘Debanking’ of Fintechs

By Ranamita Chakraborty | 25/05/2021

The government needs to better understand the policy issues which may be leading to debanking so that they can be addressed, said Senator Andrew Bragg.