The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has revealed it will publish results from its surveillance into accountants operating without a limited Australian financial services licence in the coming weeks.
During the regulator’s panel at the SMSF Association 2018 National Conference in Sydney today, ASIC deputy chairman Peter Kell told delegates: “We’re having a look at whether there’s been any residual people who are trying to pretend that the licensing regime hasn’t come into play.”
Kell pointed out that issues with unlicensed accountants have been mostly anecdotal and that there had been no evidence it was a widespread problem.
“But we want to test it so we’ve gone out to conduct a surveillance of unlicensed accountants to check that they’re not operating in a way that should require them to get a licence,” he said.
“We’ll publish some brief results on that probably in the next month or so.
“Again, it’s not because we thought there was some sort of widespread problem necessarily but it’s always important to check because it can get a bit invisible and it doesn’t help those who are operating legitimately and it doesn’t help consumers either.”
