The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) today announced details of its procedures for dealing with new audit notifications required as a result of the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program (Audit Reform and Corporate Disclosure) Act 2004 (CLERP 9).
The new procedures have been put in place as part of the new notification requirements for registered company auditors, audit firms or audit companies, arising from the expansion of auditors’ duties under CLERP 9.
These changes are necessary to ensure that ASIC can streamline and address these matters on a timely basis, as strict time periods apply to these notifications and for the resolution of the matters reported.
Under amendments made to the Corporations Act 2001 (the Act) by CLERP 9, auditors must report certain matters to ASIC. These include matters where the auditor has reasonable grounds to suspect a significant contravention of the Act, or if someone has attempted to mislead or interfere in the proper conduct of the audit. See section 311 of the Act and the revised ASIC Practice Note 34 issued on 1 July 2004, which is available from the ASIC website at www.asic.gov.au.
Auditors must also notify ASIC of certain conflicts of interest as soon as the auditor becomes aware of the relevant circumstances. These matters need to be resolved and ASIC needs to be notified within a prescribed time period or the auditor, audit firm or audit company will cease to be the auditor of the entity and be removed from the database as auditor of the entity by ASIC. See section 324 of the Act.
ASIC has developed a fast track process for dealing with these notifications and such notices can be lodged with us via our Regulatory Portal at https://regulatoryportal.asic.gov.au/. This will enable ASIC to respond to these matters within the required timeframes.
The changes noted above will take effect immediately.
Editor's note:
On 30 March 2020, references to an email address and postal address were removed to reflect the rollout of ASIC's Regulatory Portal.