Fund Regulatory Update

CommSec, AUSIEX breach Market Integrity Rules

CommSec and AUSIEX have been ordered to pay a record sum for breaching Market Integrity Rules. CommSec will pay $20 million, while AUSIEX will pay $7.12 million. The failures were found across a nine-year period, with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) taking the two firms to court.

CommSec customers were found to have been overcharged brokerage fees on around 121,000 instances equating to over $4.3 million, while both companies failed to comply with client money reconciliation requirements and provide accurate confirmations to customers for certain transactions. CommSec was found to not have had appropriate system filters to detect wash trading.

CommSec and AUSIEX both failed to comply with their own best execution policies, amongst other breaches.

APRA publishes statistics for improving superannuation industry transparency

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has published new statistics to support transparency in the superannuation industry, the Quarterly Superannuation Industry Publication. The publication includes new and expanded data collected as part of the Superannuation Data Transformation reporting standards.

The new data includes information on the number and types of products and options available in the industry, and offers insight into member demographics and account balances.