Corporate watchdog ASIC has revealed its 2026 enforcement priorities, saying it will protect consumers from financial harm, with investigations into the $1b-plus Shield and First Guardian collapses leading its crackdown.<\/p>\n
Private credit practices, financial reporting misconduct, insurance complaints and claims handling, and misleading pricing are among a range of enforcement priorities for 2026.<\/p>\n
ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court says they have been designed to protect consumers from financial harm and uphold the integrity of Australia’s financial markets.<\/p>\n
“We’re doing more investigations, taking more matters to court and securing record penalties,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Court said, over the past year, ASIC had doubled the number of new investigations and almost doubled the number of matters filed in court.<\/p>\n
“We’ve also worked hard to increase our criminal prosecutions, and seen lengthy sentences imposed for financial fraud offences,” she said.<\/p>\n
In 2026, she said, ASIC’s enforcement priorities would be:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Misleading pricing practices affecting cost of living for Australians<\/p>\n
\u2022 Poor private credit practices<\/p>\n
\u2022 Financial reporting misconduct, including failure to lodge financial reports<\/p>\n
\u2022 Claims and complaint handling failures by insurers<\/p>\n
\u2022 Hold those responsible to account for the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian master funds<\/p>\n
“ASIC will zero in on misleading pricing practices in the financial services sector, particularly those that make everyday costs harder for Australians,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Corporate watchdog ASIC has revealed its 2026 enforcement priorities, saying it will protect consumers from financial harm, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2001,64,29217,63,166,2009,99,174,20024,5304,2003,2005,186,1605,160,6461,2010,1603,171,78777,2007,2006,5463,20611,5464,41884,2004,1996,1491],"class_list":["post-280373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-asx","tag-au","tag-aud","tag-australia","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-commodities","tag-currency","tag-dollar","tag-dow-jones","tag-finance","tag-finance-news","tag-live-blog","tag-live-news","tag-live-update","tag-market-news","tag-markets","tag-markets-live","tag-nasdaq","tag-nyse","tag-sp-500","tag-sharemarket","tag-shares","tag-stockmarket","tag-stocks","tag-tech","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}