ASIC fees-for-service

The Turnbull Government is delivering on its commitment to introduce an industry funding model for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), with the model’s Phase 2 Fees-for-service exposure draft legislation and explanatory materials released for stakeholder feedback.

Under the ASIC Industry Funding Model, from 1 July 2018 fees-for-service will be introduced to recover ASIC regulatory costs that are directly attributable to a single, identifiable, entity. Currently, the fees associated with these activities do not reflect the costs to ASIC of undertaking these activities. Traditionally, many of these activities have only attracted a nominal fee, which has not been subject to any review resulting in the cost of these activities being subsidised by taxpayers.

Fees associated with registry activities are excluded from the scope of this proposal.

The Government previously consulted on this measure over November and December 2017. This exposure draft legislation and its explanatory materials reflect the outcomes of this process.

In preparation for the 1 July 2018 fees-for-service regime, the Australian Government seeks stakeholder feedback on the exposure draft legislation and its explanatory materials.

While the exposure draft legislation includes proposed fee amounts, the actual fee amounts will only be finalised once ASIC has undertaken public consultation on its fees‑for‑service Cost Recovery Implementation Statement.

Treasury has produced tailored consultation documents to address stakeholder needs in the consultation period by enabling stakeholders to see the actual content of the changes. These documents are the listed clean and track changes versions of the corporations, credit and superannuation fees tables in the regulations – specifically Schedule 1 Fees in the Corporations (Fees) Regulations 2001, Schedule 1 Fees for chargeable matters in the National Consumer Credit Protection (Fees) Regulations 2010 and Regulation 4 Fees in the Superannuation Auditor Registration Imposition Regulation 2012. These documents update the existing fees table in the regulations to highlight which fees are changing and by how much. This information is reflective of the content of the eventual final regulations and is further explained in the exposure draft explanatory statement. The eventual final regulations will contain revised tables in the schedules that show what the fee amounts will be from 1 July 2018 for regulatory fees. This will also contain registry fees, which will continue to be indexed but are out of the scope of the fees-for-service regime.

The consultation period on the Bills related documents – numbered documents 1 to 4 – is 11 April 2018 – 24 April 2018.

The consultation period on the regulations related documents – numbered documents 5 to 11 – is 11 April 2018 – 1 May 2018.