ASIC released its corporate plan for 2022-25 on Thursday, flagging a new investigatory project focusing on social media advice and its influence on retail investment decisions.
The news came following concerns from the industry and federal opposition that affordability issues in advice were pushing more consumers towards social media spruikers, despite the financial services minister saying it was not in the government’s purview to regulate the online space.
In the plan, ASIC said it would “expand monitoring of social media platforms and moderators to facilitate early detection of unlicensed advice and research”.
In addition, the regulator said it planned to engage with providers in the social media space to “drive behavioural change, monitor unlicensed activity and educate retail investors”.
The new project is ranked as a level 1 in ASIC’s list of strategic priorities, which identify “threats and behaviours that lead to harm” and prioritise “harms that need to be addressed”.
ASIC also released its statement of intent alongside the government’s new statement of expectations for the regulator on Thursday, which effectively jettisoned ASIC’s “why not litigate” mandate in favour of a more flexible and business-friendly regulatory approach to support economic recovery from COVID.
However, the regulator’s corporate plan indicates little change in terms of the share of resources devoted to surveillance and enforcement of financial services laws as compared to education, with 53.5 per cent of ASIC’s “estimated effort by activity” for the 2022 year planned to be devoted to enforcement.
A further 26.4 per cent was allocated to supervision and surveillance, with 4.5 per cent to stakeholder engagement, 3.3 per cent to guidance and just 0.2 per cent to education.
Hang on ASIC, Minister for Robo Advice Ms Hume thinks a free for all world is fine for the Interweb and a world full of dodgy Finfluencers.
Come Ms Hume, laugh again about 9 different Regulators killing Real Advisers but then purposely do nothing but promote online scams.
Ms Hume you are a sad useless joke :-/
Barefoot is scared not!
Im assuming asic will then ask you tube to contribute to this surveillance, and also charge every single you tube user a levy to contribute to it also, they will need to watch every video just in case. Then it can ask publishers to chip in and of course all the authors of books, they will need to pay a levy, so asic can read all the books coming out to make sure no personal advice is in there. Markets for this user pays survellience business plan everywhere you look.
I’ll pick up the tab for you to Mr. ASIC. You’re welcome.
0.2 per cent to education says it all. ASIC isn’t interested in fixing anything, and certainly isn’t interested in a flexible and business friendly approach. If they ever get around to policing unlicensed advice, which is blatant and easy to find, they will simply penalise no one, and will charge licensed advisers for the work.
ASIC, start with the bloke that cant afford shoes…….
we all know that would be an own goal.