Earlier this year ASIC spoke to a wide range of our stakeholders, to find out how we could streamline our interactions with them, engage with them more efficiently, and remove unnecessary frictions in our administration of the law.

Thank you for your input to that process. We now have three initiatives under way.

They focus on:

• development and maintenance of ASIC’s regulatory guidance;
• use of information gathering powers and scene setting investigation meetings; and
• stakeholder engagement and user experience.

These initiatives are being implemented alongside existing work on enhancing ASIC’s systems and user experience, which is also expected to have efficiency benefits.

For each tranche of work, ASIC is considering its current approaches, testing ideas and thinking about new ways to do the work.

Development and maintenance of ASIC’s regulatory guidance

We are reviewing both how we develop and update our regulatory guidance. We aim to publish a regulatory development timetable, and better coordinate how we maintain our existing regulatory guidance.

We have taken into account your views about how we implement and communicate our guidance and related feedback. We will also consider how we can support you to plan for and manage these changes more effectively.

Information gathering and investigation meetings

We are looking at how we can improve our approach to the use of our compulsory information gathering powers, and our engagement with entities under investigation, to ensure that engagement is transparent, targeted, and efficient, and people understand the steps involved in an investigation and what is expected of them.

We will test the effectiveness of our engagement with the recipients of requests, as well as – where appropriate – the practice of meeting with entities before we begin a complex or significant investigation. These meetings will focus on the expectations associated with the conduct of the investigation. 

Stakeholder engagement, with a case study of our licensing engagement model

Finally, we are reviewing our approach to stakeholder engagement, including using as a case study our engagement with licence applicants. We are taking into account your feedback about the clarity and consistency of our communication about our priorities, expectations, and decisions.

Systems

We also received feedback about the experiences users have with our systems and portals.

We are continuing to invest in capabilities that support ASIC being a digitally enabled regulator – including through our work on ASIC’s digital transformation and regulatory system enhancements. This includes a program of work to uplift our online services, including our portals, focusing on maximising the user experience.

Overall, the initiatives above are aimed at making it easier for you to interact with ASIC. We will continue to update you about our regulatory efficiency work as it progresses.

To contact the Regulatory Efficiency Unit, please email us at REU@asic.gov.au.

ASIC is Australia’s corporate, markets and financial services regulator.