The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced its enforcement priorities for 2025, capturing the key areas where it will focus its expertise and resources.
ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said, "Our 2025 enforcement priorities reflect the increased risks consumers are facing that are being driven by cost of living pressures. These priorities are about protecting Australians from financial harm and targeting the people who try to take advantage of them.
"We will focus on business models that are designed to avoid consumer credit protections, and we will take action against those engaging in unlawful debt management and collection. We will also target conduct that exploits superannuation savings, with a particular focus on unscrupulous property investment schemes.
"ASIC will continue to fiercely uphold the integrity of Australia’s financial markets, and to support this, we have established a new dedicated team to target insider trading."
In 2025, ASIC’s enforcement priorities will include:
- Misconduct exploiting superannuation savings
- Unscrupulous property investment schemes
- Failures by insurers to deal fairly and in good faith with customers
- Strengthening the investigation and prosecution of insider trading
- Business models designed to avoid consumer credit protections
- Misconduct that impacts small businesses and their creditors
- Debt management and collection misconduct
- Licensee failures to have adequate cyber-security protections
- Greenwashing and misleading ESG claims
- Member services failures in the superannuation sector
- Auditor misconduct
- Used car finance that is sold to vulnerable consumers by finance providers
An increase of 25% in new investigations was reported by ASIC last year. Also, ASIC increased civil proceedings by 23% and achieved significant enforcement outcomes across greenwashing, crypto, predatory lending, high-cost credit, and insider trading.
"We have more matters before criminal courts around the country than we do before civil courts, and it requires intensive efforts by ASIC investigators to continue each of those cases.
"However, numbers only tell one part of the story. Numbers don’t capture the full impact of the enforcement actions filed including the resulting compliance and deterrence we achieve, particularly in relation to consumer and investor protections and changing industry behaviour," Court said.
The agency's enforcement priorities reflect emerging issues and risks it identifies, investigates, and prosecutes.
Even though ASIC's strategic targets change as economic factors shift and the risk environment changes, its enduring priorities remain the same.
ASIC’s enduring priorities target:
- Misconduct damaging market integrity including insider trading, continuous disclosure breaches and market manipulation
- Misconduct impacting First Nations people
- Misconduct involving a high risk of significant consumer harm particularly conduct targeting financially vulnerable consumers
- Systemic compliance failures by large financial institutions resulting in widespread consumer harm
- New or emerging conduct risks within the financial system
- Governance and directors’ duties failures
It is ASIC's mission to protect consumers and promote market integrity for all Australians. By taking decisive enforcement action, it protects consumers, addresses misconduct, punishes wrongdoers, and reduces the risk of misconduct in its markets and sectors.
Court said: "Over the past year, ASIC has continued to deliver on our vision for a fair, strong and efficient financial system for all Australians.
"As part of our enforcement approach, we set ambitious enforcement priorities to communicate our areas of focus and give a clear indication of where we will direct our resources and expertise in the coming year.
"We use our full suite of regulatory tools – and take criminal, civil and regulatory action - to promote compliance and accountability, and to enforce the law.
"Last year, we both increased our numbers of formal investigations and we filed more court proceedings than in the previous year. We had important outcomes in areas spanning greenwashing, crypto, predatory lending, high-cost credit and insider trading, to name but a few.
"Our enforcement actions resulted in over $90 million in court ordered penalties. Our investigations also led to criminal convictions, and multiple individuals being charged by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
"Turning to 2025, and recognising current cost of living pressures, we have selected our enforcement priorities for the coming year with a focus on protecting consumers from financial harm. We will focus on business models that are designed to avoid consumer credit protections, and we will take action against those engaging in unlawful debt management and collection.
"We will also target conduct that exploits superannuation savings, with a particular focus on fraudulent property investment schemes.
"We will continue to fiercely uphold the integrity of our financial markets, and we have established a new dedicated team to target insider trading.
"Other new priorities for 2025 include licensee failures to have adequate cyber security protections and auditor misconduct."
Find out more about ASIC's enduring priorities and its areas of focus for 2025 on the ASIC website.