ASIC MIS funding will support platform oversight

Daniel Mulino. Photo Tim Baker.

ASIC will likely be instructed to monitor managed investment scheme (MIS) flows via platform data collection after reaping $17.8 million in this week’s budget for oversight over the next four years.

Budget papers revealed earlier this week that there was a provision for $17.8 million over four years from FY27, and $1.4 million a year ongoing after that to strengthen MIS governance requirements, supervision and enforcement.

The government is still consulting with industry on its most recent MIS review, but Minister for Financial Services Daniel Mulino revealed in a post-budget webinar briefing hosted by the Financial Services Council on Thursday morning he was “pleased” ASIC secured the funding.  

“There’s a lot of detail for us to work through because yes, ASIC will build up capabilities, but it’s going to have to be a process where we do that in a way where we’re consulting heavily with the sector, with consumer groups and all interested parties,” Mulino said.

Mulino said that based on existing information, he believes there are low-cost ways for ASIC to have oversight of where risks are arising based on shared data from platforms.

“If we can have better real-time reporting of flows of investors, it might be that some basic flags like flows of large numbers out of heavily regulated super products into MISs, for example, but on low balances,” Mulino said.

“It might be that if there’s quite a lot of those occurring in a particular way, ASIC would have a look early on.”

Mulino said there will be “devil in the detail” about what data gets shared with whom, but he’s been received with “openness” by parts of the sector for sharing that information.

“The next layer would be trying to figure out is there a way we can look at the riskiness of where the flows are going. If there were a whole bunch of people going into MISs, but the MIS was a very diversified, very safe set of products, you probably wouldn’t be too worried about that,” Mulino said.

“If it was going into a MIS where it was highly concentrated, risky products that was being managed by people without a lot of track record, then that would incline you to have a look more quickly.”

Along with a review into MISs, the government has also been reviewing the sustainability of the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort.

The minister said changes to the CSLR cap for investors of $150,000 was off the table, but “but for” claims would be excluded from the scheme, a position held by his predecessor Stephen Jones and even the CSLR.

“But for” determinations gained notoriety after the launch of the CSLR when the Financial Advice Association Australia pointed to a Dixon Advisory determination where the client was awarded compensation despite not suffering a capital loss.

It led AFCA to have to defend the provision, arguing it was a legally tested mechanism that compensated investors for investment gains they missed out on as they would have been better off without receiving the advice.

However, the minister signalled that “but for” losses would remain part of AFCA claims, just not part of the CSLR.

“When I think of the CSLR… the best outcome is prevention,” Mulino said.

“We’re not trying to reduce losses because of the CSLR, we’re trying to reduce losses because we want the best outcomes for investors.”

The CSLR levy surpassed the $20 million subsector cap for the first time in FY26, with a further $47 million being levied across a broader cross-section of financial services sectors.

The FY27 subsector levy is expected to surpass $120 million, and possibly even $250 million depending on the progress of Shield and First Guardian claims, with another special levy due.

The FAAA released the results of a member survey suggesting that 79 per cent of advisers say they will be forced to increase client fees to offset the CSLR cost.

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4 responses to “ASIC MIS funding will support platform oversight”

  1. Ross Smith

    In 1998 Treasury Legislation was passed for single Responsible Entities, which is a fiduciary weak structure. Before 1998, it was a fiduciary strong Dual Structure: Trustee-Manager, where the Trustee held the retail investors, controlled the fund expenses, paid the manager’s fee and monitored manager’s performance to be in line with its mandate. In 2013, New Zealand updated its Dual Structure: Trustee-Manager. Minister Mulino after his PhD does not research. Treasury should be compensating every investor who lost thir investment under the failed single Responsible Entity regime. Journalists are not telling the Minister – cannot get this message across? $17.8 million should be put into CSLR to reduce levy cost to small businesses who have done nothing wrong in their communities.

  2. SONJA

    From the ASIC regulatory oversight failures a Victims perspective. Throwing another $17.8 million at ASIC is not “reform”. It is an admission that the regulator already had the powers, the intelligence, the warnings and the legislative tools — but failed to act.

    The elephant in the room is not data. It is will.

    ASIC already receives mountains of information:
    • breach reports,
    • bank records,
    • investor complaints,
    • platform intelligence,
    • AFSL data,
    • trust structures,
    • suspicious fund flows,
    • direct whistleblower reports,
    • and repeated warnings from industry participants and investors.

    Lion Property Group, Shield and First Guardian did not collapse because ASIC lacked “real-time platform oversight”. They collapsed because ASIC repeatedly failed to intervene early, failed to identify obvious regulatory red flags, and failed to use the powers Parliament already gave it.

    Now we are told the answer is more surveillance of investor flows.

    Australians are entitled to ask:
    If ASIC could not properly act on direct evidence already sitting in front of it, why should anyone believe another data feed fixes the problem?

    The real issue is cultural and structural:
    ASIC has evolved into a reactive enforcement body — a financial coroner — rather than the proactive cop on the financial beat Australians fund it to be.

    And while ordinary Australians lose homes, retirements and life savings, Treasury and Finance continue constructing an almost impenetrable accountability shield around ASIC itself.

    The irony is staggering.

    Government now proposes monitoring “flows” into risky MIS structures while simultaneously refusing to properly examine whether ASIC’s previous failures contributed to billions in losses across the MIS sector over two decades.

    The CSLR explosion is not a market accident.
    It is the accumulated cost of regulatory failure.

    Industry levies are now socialising the cost of regulatory incompetence across advisers and consumers while the institutions responsible avoid genuine scrutiny.

    Daniel Mulino says “prevention” is the goal.

    Good.
    Then start with the obvious prevention measure:
    Hold ASIC publicly accountable for why existing powers, existing intelligence and existing warnings repeatedly failed to protect Australians in the first place.

    Because no amount of new funding fixes a regulator that already had the money, already had the powers, but lacked the institutional will to act.

  3. Jeremy Wright

    After nearly 40 years in the Financial Services Industry and having dealt with every type of entity that is involved, from clients to Advisers, practices, Licensees, Insurers, Investment providers, Regulators, Government ministers and the Government bureaucratic system, the one overriding fault in the whole shebang, is the protocol of getting vast information from everyone with a vested interest and virtually ignoring the very people who will be impacted, like experienced Advisers, ( hence twelve thousand exiting the Industry ) and based on REAL experience, who would have brought to the table, alternative issues that would have highlighted far reaching consequences of “Utopian” grand plans. What we have in Australia today, is an inability to see ALL the variables of ill thought-out, dart board solutions. Australia has become a nation of blinkered analysis, where the real world is ignored and absolute naïve solutions are seen as the best result, are implemented and the merry go round of Billions stolen, misused and wasted, continues to roll along causing mayhem for so many people who deserve better than what our Government and Public servant institutionalized system provides.

    1. SONJA

      Jeremy Wright has summed up in a few paragraphs what many Australians and industry professionals have been saying for years.

      Forty years of real-world experience counts for far more than another round of theoretical “consultation” designed inside bureaucratic echo chambers.

      Congratulations Jeremy on having the courage to say plainly what so many know privately — that Australia’s financial system is drowning in process, data collection and institutional self-protection while practical experience and common sense are increasingly ignored.

      The tragic reality is that billions continue to be lost not because there is insufficient regulation, but because the system repeatedly fails to listen to those who actually understand where the risks are emerging in the real world.

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Here’s one thing the AIOFP might be right about

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