Post 'Royal Commission' implementation - ASIC’s revised timetable of ongoing work
The revised timetable from ASIC is a chance to review where the Australian financial services sector is heading, particularly with the increased levels of financial hardship and consumer vulnerability as a result
of COVID-19.
Given the transparency of this work, it certainly provides an opportunity for businesses to start proactively raising the bar.
Particularly when considering the ‘Product Intervention Power’ and the added incentive to understand what “products have resulted, or will result, or is likely to result in significant consumer detriment”. To that end, we should be reviewing any outdated forms of compliance monitoring and implement a transformative outcome testing capability – calibrated to current regulatory thinking – to enable self-diagnosis of emerging trends and drive internal insight.
Considering all 19 projects, it strikes me how ‘fair customer outcomes’ and more importantly, the ability to measure customer outcomes (and strategic improvement initiatives when systemic issues are identified) is of utmost importance both when conducting remediation projects and when providing financial services products to customers.