Sydney, 5 May, 2006: The Australian Bankers’ Association (ABA) welcomes the release of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) paper – ‘Better Regulation’ initiatives.

This paper reinforces that ASIC, pursuant to its statutory obligations, is striving to "maintain, facilitate and improve the performance of the financial system and the entities in it, in the interests of commercial certainty, reducing business costs, and the efficiency and development of the economy."¹

The ABA has been participating in the debate about regulatory improvement and viewed the Regulation Taskforce’s² report ‘Rethinking Regulation’ as a potential watershed in the direction of regulation in Australia as it recommends the adoption of sound regulatory processes as the basis of decision-making going forward.

The ASIC paper, which contains a number of regulatory enhancements it intends to deliver over the coming months, reflects some of the Regulation Taskforce’s thinking.

David Bell, Chief Executive of the ABA, said: “The ABA made some recommendations to the Regulation Taskforce which I am pleased to see have been taken on board by ASIC. The six priorities for better regulation identified by ASIC are important to the banking sector.”

“The banking industry welcomes ASIC’s intention to develop greater expertise in analysing the impact on business of its regulatory decisions. In particular, ASIC notes in its document that it plans to better quantify business costs of options and use this cost information in its future decision-making.”

“The ABA is keen to continue to work with ASIC to develop effective measures of business costs and will be interested to understand how the impact analysis methodology will be used to assist the regulator make its decisions on how regulatory change is implemented.”

“The ABA looks forward to participating on the Business Consultative Panel which ASIC intends to establish to discuss business issues and enable feedback on policies and practices.”

“The ABA is also pleased that ASIC is embarking on a project to improve accessibility of regulation by rationalising the myriad of documents it has issued on financial services regulation.”

The ABA also looks forward to liaising with ASIC as it addresses other priorities such as improving transparency of regulatory decisions, streamlining paperwork and reducing duplication and overlap.

For further information:

Heather Wellard
Director, Public Relations
Phone: 02 8298 0411
Mobile: 0409 830 439

ENDS

1 Section 1 (2) (a) of the ASIC Act
2 Established jointly by the Prime Minister and Treasurer in October last year, and chaired by the   Chairman of the Productivity Commission, Gary Banks