ASIC to commence MIS auditing in FY27

18 May 2026 16:05

ASIC will begin reviewing the financial reports of managed investment schemes as part of the regulator’s FY27 priorities.

The corporate watchdog announced on Monday morning it will review 25 audit files in FY27 which will expand coverage to MISs in addition to its usual focus on listed and unlisted companies and registrable superannuation entities.

ASIC will select audit files from a mix of sources including where there has been a material correction to a financial report or where the regulator is concerned that a financial report may be materially misstated; files based on other internal or external data (including independence threats) which indicates a risk to audit quality; or from a random selection process.

The move comes in the aftermath of the $1 billion Shield and First Guardian collapse, after ASIC acted against the two MISs due to concerns that investor money was being misused on high-risk investments, pet projects of directors and personal expenses. Court proceedings against both funds are ongoing.

Investments in Shield and First Guardian grew due to a sophisticated network of lead generators that contacted people who used online “superannuation health check” advertisements before utilising high-pressure sales tactics to refer them to financial advisers.

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.

Minister for Financial Services Daniel Mulino indicated last week that ASIC will likely be instructed to use that budgetary allocation to monitor MIS flows via platform data collection.

ASIC had told a Parliamentary committee earlier this year that it can’t functionally monitor all MISs, and outgoing chair Joe Longo also criticised the current legislative standards for MIS approval process as being a check-a-box process.

Greater scrutiny of superannuation switching and more regulatory oversight of MISs are on the cards as the government released another consultation in response to the Shield and First Guardian collapse.

It’s just one of several consultations currently being undertaken by the government, which could see other changes including a ban on advice fee deductions for super switching, requiring trustees to compensate members for losses, ending ‘but for’ determinations from the CSLR, and higher restrictions on lead generation are among the suite of reforms proposed by the government.

But outside of policy changes, the Financial Services Council recently established industry-led solutions by requiring the platform trustees in its membership to lift oversight standards for MISs.

asic, Australian Securities and Investments Commission, managed investments schemes, MIS

One response to “ASIC to commence MIS auditing in FY27”

SONJA

May 19, 2026

What makes victims of regulatory oversight failure furious about this is the contradiction.
For years, ASIC and Treasury have effectively hidden behind “ASIC is an independent regulator”
“We cannot interfere with operational matters”
“Investigations are confidential”
“ASIC decides its own priorities”
But now suddenly ASIC says it cannot functionally monitor MISs,
Joe Longo says the approval regime is only a “check-the-box” process, Treasury allocates funding, Mulino indicates ASIC may be “instructed” to use platform-flow monitoring, and everyone acts like this is some shocking new discovery after Shield and First Guardian.
Victims of regulatory failure and Govt Dept inertia are entitled to ask, where the hell was this urgency during Prime Trust, Sterling First, Dixon Advisory, Mayfair 101, Courtenay House, and Lion Property Group?
Because none of this is revolutionary. Monitoring pooled investor funds, tracing inter-entity transfers, checking AFSL authority, identifying unregistered MIS characteristics, related-party flows, and misuse of investor money is not advanced magic. It is baseline forensic accounting and regulatory triage……of course always subject to ASIC’s internal cost benefit analysis!
The bigger issue is the “unregulated space” narrative. That phrase has become one of the most politically dangerous concepts in Australian financial regulation because it effectively translates to:
“We saw activity occurring around the edges of the regulatory perimeter and chose not to fully intervene.” But many of these collapses raise the exact same question, if ASIC knew enough to investigate, receive misconduct reports, obtain bank records, examine fundraising conduct, or identify pooling behaviour, then at what point did the regulator reassess whether the structure itself was operating as an unregistered MIS requiring registration and an AFSL?
That is the question that keeps coming back. Because once you identify, pooled investor funds, common enterprise, expectation of profits, investors lacking day-to-day control, interdependency between projects/entities, and ongoing capital raising, then people naturally ask, How was this still being treated as somehow “outside” the regulated framework? And the political contradiction becomes obvious, when ASIC wants distance from accountability, it emphasises independence;
when ASIC wants legislative change, budget increases, or expanded powers, suddenly ministers, Treasury, and Parliament are expected to direct and empower it.
ASIC cannot simultaneously claim complete operational independence from scrutiny, AND inability to act without further legislative prompting.
That is the contradiction many victims now see clearly.
The uncomfortable reality is that much of what is now being proposed after THE REGULATORY FAILURE OVERSIGHT OF 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 AND 2026 sounds less like discovery of a new problem and more like retrospective acknowledgment that the existing warning signs were already visible for years, JUST IGNORED.

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