{"id":328143,"date":"2025-12-04T22:48:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/328143\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:48:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:48:21","slug":"asic-asleep-at-the-wheel-aiofp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/328143\/","title":{"rendered":"ASIC asleep at the wheel \u2013 AIOFP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"breadcrumbs\" class=\"yoast\"><a href=\"https:\/\/financialnewswire.com.au\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Home<\/a> &gt; <a href=\"https:\/\/financialnewswire.com.au\/.\/funds-management\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Funds Management<\/a> &gt; ASIC asleep at the wheel \u2013 AIOFP<\/p>\n<p><img width=\"1200\" height=\"620\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-post-image nectar-lazy toploaded loaded nectar-lazy toploaded loaded\" alt=\"Asleep at the wheel\" title=\"\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" data-nectar-img-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Shutterstock_2673541367.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Shutterstock_2673541367.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) was \u2018asleep at the wheel\u2019 on Shield and First Guardian and needs to accept its share of blame, according to a letter from the Association of Independent Financial Professionals (AIOFP) to parliamentarians.<\/p>\n<p>At virtually the same time as ASIC Commissioner, Alan Kirkland was outlining the regulator\u2019s actions with respect to the collapse of Shield and First Guardian, AIOFP executive director, Peter Johnston sent a letter to parliamentarians stating that ASIC\u2019s failings should not be overlooked.<\/p>\n<p>The letter noted that ASIC had been warned on at least two occasions in 2023 but failed to act.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis unfortunately allowed another $526 million of Consumer savings to be allocated<\/p>\n<p>Johnston\u2019s letter states that AIOFP cannot understand why ASIC did not take advantage of Section 920A[1][ba] of the Corporations Act which gave it power to act if they \u2018believe\u2019 or think it \u2018is likely\u2019 persons are contravening the law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they had acted when alerted this matter could have been largely avoided. The perpetrators actions would have been frozen until ASIC could further investigate the circumstances. This Law gives ASIC extraordinary powers to intervene in any commercial matter,\u201d the letter said.\u00a0 \u201cThe question needs to be asked why ASIC did not implement this approach? \u201c<\/p>\n<p>\u201cASIC is silent on this issue but it is obvious they need to start employing \u2018street smart\u2019 lawyers instead of the inexperienced or bureaucratic Lawyers who are removed from or never been in the \u2018real commercial world\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe common political response is more regulatory power, but ASIC have ample already, the harsh reality is the ASIC senior management are predominately all career Bureaucrats who don\u2019t fully understand the commercial market and behave accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis needs to change to protect consumers and the Advice Profession going forward,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home &gt; Funds Management &gt; ASIC asleep at the wheel \u2013 AIOFP The Australian Securities and Investments Commission&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[183984,5799,64,63,99,51480,186,17386,184,185,70899],"class_list":["post-328143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-aiofp","tag-asic","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-corporations-act","tag-finance","tag-first-guardian-master-fund","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-shield-master-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328143","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=328143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}