ASIC asks for input on reportable situations, IDR dashboards

The corporate regulator plans to introduce two interactive dashboards that would track firm-level reportable situations and internal dispute resolution (IDR) data to push financial firms to lift their game.

ASIC is consulting on plans to publish dashboards containing firm-level reportable situations and IDR data later this year.

The regulator said doing so would support the regimes by enhancing transparency and accountability to encourage improved behaviour and increase confidence in the financial system, while also highlighting areas of concentration of significant breaches and complaints and enabling firms to target improvements across the board.

"Publishing reportable situations and IDR data will encourage firms to lift their game. It also provides consumers and investors access to this data at firm level, further encouraging confident and informed participation in the financial system," commissioner Alan Kirkland said.

The reportable situations data published would include significant breaches of core obligations and situations where the licensee is no longer able to comply with a core obligation and the breach is likely to be significant. The other dashboard would publish all IDR data submissions, including reports of no complaints in a period.

Firms would be named and their AFSL number published alongside them, but individual licensees' names and AFSL numbers would not.

The reportable situations data would be published annually, while the IDR data will come out biannually. It will all be accompanied by explanatory notes and contextual statements to assist in consumers' interpretation of the data.

In December, ASIC published the inaugural IDR data report, flagging concerns that firms were not reporting correctly.

In advice, service-related issues were overwhelmingly the top complaint, accounting for three times more complaints than the second most common issue.

The top three reasons for investments and advice complaints were service-related issues (45%), general service delay (14%), and technical problems (9%).

Interestingly, the report revealed that the top three outcomes for investments and advice complaints were no remedy, or apology or explanation only (49%), service-based remedy (43%), and monetary remedy (7%).

In FY24, financial firms reported 72,238 complaints relating to investments and advice and around 63% were resolved on the same day, three-quarters were resolved within four days, and almost all complaints (99%) were resolved within 46 days.

In terms of superannuation complaints, firms reported 220,860 with around 54% of those being resolved on the same day and more than $15 million was paid to complainants as a remedy.

The top three products for superannuation complaints were superannuation account (73%), pension (11%), and death benefit (5%). The top three issues were service-related issues (26%), delay in following instructions (12%), and technical problems (10%).

Also in December, ASIC said licensees have some way to go in complying with the reportable situations regime.

Reviewing the compliance arrangements of 14 licensees that had few or no situations reported between October 2021 and June 2024, ASIC found licensees were generally slow to report to ASIC because they were slow to identify breaches and commence investigations. It also found deficiencies in licensees' incident management, namely how they identified, escalated, and recorded incidents.

The consultation is open until May 14, with ASIC anticipating it will begin publishing the dashboards in Q4.