ASIC industry funding

ASIC Regulatory Portal now open for the 2022-23 annual reporting cycle

To enable ASIC to calculate invoices, entities are required to submit or confirm pre-filled business activity metric data on the operation of their business for the 2022-23 financial year. This will be done via the ASIC Regulatory Portal.

Lodgements are required to be submitted between 25 July 2023 to 27 September 2023.

ASIC will use the information provided to calculate an entity’s share of the regulatory costs for the 2022-23 financial year.

ASIC Regulatory Portal account holders will be able to log in to view and pay their entity’s invoice online. For those not registered on the portal, the invoice will be sent via mail to the address registered with ASIC.

What is industry funding

Under ASIC’s industry funding model, ASIC’s regulatory costs are funded through appropriation from the Commonwealth. These costs are recovered from the industry sectors we regulate through a combination of:

industry funding levies charged to 52 subsectors and
fees for service for user-initiated, transaction-based activities where we provide a specific service to individual entities.

For an overview of how the model works Watch the video

How ASIC's industry funding model works

The infographic below provides an overview of ASIC’s industry funding model which is prescribed in acts and regulations. It aims to help our stakeholders better understand how the model works.

Download How the industry funding model works (PDF 594 KB)

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Background information about industry funding

On 20 April 2016, the Australian Government announced it would introduce an industry funding model for ASIC in response to the recommendation of the Financial System Inquiry (FSI).

The industry funding levy component of the industry funding model commenced on 1 July 2017. The second phase of the ASIC industry funding model—the introduction of ASIC fees for service—commenced on 4 July 2018.

Government policy approval for the industry funding model

On 20 April 2016, the Australian Government announced it would introduce an industry funding model for ASIC. This was in response to the recommendation of the FSI that the Government recover the cost of ASIC’s regulatory activities directly from industry participants through fees and levies calibrated to reflect the cost of regulating the different industry sectors that we regulate.

Note: See FSI, Financial System Inquiry: Final report, December 2014, recommendation 29.

The FSI identified that the Australian Government recovered only a small portion of ASIC’s costs directly from industry participants, through the Financial Institutions Supervisory Levies, application fees and the Market Supervision Cost Recovery Regime. The FSI noted that, as a result, ASIC costs were not transparent to industry and ASIC was also exposed to an increased risk of funding cuts unrelated to changes in the cost of delivering on our mandate. It also noted that the Senate Economics References Committee’s report, Performance of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (published in June 2014), highlighted that resource constraints affect ASIC’s capacity to conduct supervision and surveillance across regulated entities.

The industry funding levy component of the industry funding model commenced on 1 July 2017. However, following consultation, the Australian Government decided to delay the commencement of the fees-for-service proposals to allow time to refine the model by gathering further data to support the setting of the fee amounts. The second phase of the ASIC industry funding model—the introduction of ASIC fees for service—commenced on 4 July 2018. From that date we have been recovering our costs for specific regulatory activities requested by an entity.

The industry funding model for ASIC:

ensures that the costs of the regulatory activities undertaken by ASIC are borne by the entities ASIC regulates, rather than Australian taxpayers
establishes price signals in the way resources are allocated within ASIC
provides economic incentives to drive the Australian Government’s desired regulatory outcomes for the financial system
provides greater stability and certainty in ASIC’s funding and ensures that ASIC is adequately resourced to carry out our regulatory mandate
improves our cost transparency and accountability to industry.

Statutory authority for the levies

The legislative framework for industry funding levies is established by a number of Acts, regulations and legislative instruments:

the ASIC Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy Act 2017, which imposes a levy on persons we regulate to recover our regulatory costs
the ASIC Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy (Collection) Act 2017, which empowers ASIC to collect the levy and requires entities to submit annual metrics so that we can calculate the levy
the ASIC Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy Regulations 2017, which set out the criteria for determining the subsectors an entity is a part of and the metrics to be used for calculating the levy payable by entities in each subsector. The Regulations also require ASIC to make an annual legislative instrument setting out, for each subsector, our regulatory costs and the total amount of activity (the subsector metric) for the financial year
the Corporations (Review Fees) Regulations 2003, under which our regulatory costs for small proprietary companies will be recovered through an increase to the annual review fee for proprietary companies.

Statutory authority for fees for service

The introduction of fees for service is contained in the legislation set out in Table 1. This legislation passed both Houses of Parliament and was assented to by the Governor-General on 28 June 2018. We also explain the amendments this legislation made in Table 1.

Table 1: Legislation that establishes the fees-for-service regime

Amending legislation	Legislation amended	Amendments
Treasury Laws Amendment (ASIC Fees) Regulations 2018	Corporations (Fees) Regulations 2001 National Consumer Credit Protection (Fees) Regulations 2010 Superannuation Auditor Registration Imposition Regulation 2012	Amendments made to: prescribe the cost recovery fees we can charge for services we provide to a specific entity repeal the fees for our regulatory activities that will be funded by the industry funding levies tier fees, to ensure the fees reflect the complexity of the service and, therefore, our effort in providing the service update the hourly rate that we charge for certain services to ensure the rate reflects our costs ensure only registration fees continue to be indexed for inflation.
Corporations (Fees) Amendment (ASIC Fees) Act 2018	Corporations (Fees) Act 2001	Amendments made to: enable ASIC to charge tiered fees, based on whether a chargeable matter is low, medium or high complexity increase the statutory caps on fees so we can recover the costs we incur enable ASIC to charge a different fee for certain chargeable matters based on the type of entity.
Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Amendment (ASIC Fees) Act 2018	Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993	Minor amendments made to allow ASIC to charge fees for applications to vary or revoke the conditions or cancel the registration of an approved self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) auditor.
National Consumer Credit Protection (Fees) Amendment (ASIC Fees) Act 2018	National Credit Act	Amendment made to allow ASIC to charge different fees depending on: whether or not the applicant is an individual the credit activities they engage in.
Superannuation Auditor Registration Imposition Amendment (ASIC Fees) Act 2018	Superannuation Auditor Registration Imposition Act 2012	Amendments made to increase the maximum amount of the fee that can be prescribed in the regulations so we can recover the costs we incur when providing regulatory services to SMSF auditors.