KPMG fined $4.3 million, page-146

Au contraire Jim.

ASIC's doing a wonderful job of doing what it was set up for - collecting money.

Anyone who's trying to make a quid outside the work-for-someone-else-and-get-paid-what-they-deem-to-pay-you system will recognise the onerous and costly task of keeping ASIC supplied with the useless compliance reports it demands and charges for annually.

Looks like ASIC's been 'sprung' - but if this will make any difference is in the ether.

Article I received a few days ago.

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The corporate regulator is acting against its own charter by charging the public and every registered business in the nation fees that are hundreds or even thousands of times more than what the services cost to deliver.

The revelations are likely to put pressure on the federal government to reduce or remove the fees charged by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, particularly in light of the extent of ASIC’s failings exposed by the royal commission into financial services.

ASIC charges hundreds of millions of dollars a year for “fees for no service”. The fees, overwhelmingly borne by small business, totalled $801.7 million last year — and that impost has soared at an average of more than three times the rate of inflation every year over the past decade.

It also dwarfs ASIC’s entire operating budget of $342m for the year — and the fees were vastly more than those gouged by the big four banks and investigated by ASIC in its landmark “fees for no services” financial advice action against them.

In addition, ASIC raised $119m for the federal government by way of fines, taking to $920m the money it raised for the government last financial year, an increase of 20 per cent in just three years.

The fees to access the public documents are thousands of times more than what it costs to deliver the service, including charging $40 to obtain a company’s simple annual report and $20 for a company’s basic details, such as the identity of its directors.

Getting online access to a document “less than 10 pages” costs $19, or $22 if it is emailed.

Those charges are directly against ASIC’s charter under the 2001 ASIC Act, which states it is to provide that information to the public “efficiently”, and is required to “promote the confident and informed participation of investors and consumers in the market”.

“ASIC must strive to … receive, process and store, efficiently and quickly, the information given to (it) … and ensure that information is available as soon as practicable for access by the public”.

The ASIC Act also states the regulator is required to act to “reduce business costs”, which is at direct odds with vastly overcharging businesses and the public. ASIC’s website states it has three key mandates, one of which is “providing efficient registration services” and another is “ensuring fair and efficient markets”.

The regulator told The Australian the fees it levied were a matter for the government. The true costs of operating the ASIC registry, however, are so small that the regulator does not disclose them as a separate item in its annual reports. The Australian Securities Exchange, which handles a free public registry to which all listed companies must file documents, said the cost of running that service was so small to be not “material” to its costs.

ASIC’s accounts show that while raising $920m for the federal government last year, the government paid ASIC $342m to operate in the year. That payment was less than its $392m actual operating costs, causing ASIC to book a $43.6m loss. The regulator’s accounts show it is currently carrying a $235.3m accumulated loss, despite having handed $5.9 billion to the government since 2010.

In May the government indicated it would further increase its share, announcing ASIC’s permanent funding would be cut from $346m to $320m and its staff cut by 30 investigators.

ASIC is pushing to raise even more money by charging certain industries new charges to cover its costs under its “industry funding model” — despite all businesses already paying more than double in fees the amount the regulator costs to run its entire operation.

And in changes effective from today, ASIC has further raised its “annual review fee” for “small proprietary companies” by $4.

One of the biggest cost drivers is the regulator charging vastly inflated fees for the public to access its “public” business registration and company information database. In other words, the regulator charges about $800m a year for companies to lodge documents — and for companies and the public to access those public documents.

The operations and failures of ASIC have come under greater scrutiny amid the royal commission into financial services, which has heard scores of examples of bad behaviour by banks that were missed by the regulator.

Former ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft, who left the job last year and who famously described Australia as a “paradise” for white-collar criminals, long argued the nation could only get from ASIC what the government was “willing to pay for”. New ASIC chairman James Shipton, a former Goldman Sachs banker, appears to be distancing himself from the issue with the response that the fees are a matter for the government.

A spokesman for Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer said ASIC’s fee regimen had been “in place for many years” and “involves both registry and regulatory fees”. “ASIC collects fees for the use of government-owned infrastructure, similar to other state and federal government agencies,” the spokesman said.

Several private companies are contracted by ASIC to provide access to the data, including SAI Global, which charges $51.30 for a company’s annual report, while searches can also be done through ASIC’s website. Every time a lawyer needs to do a search in a divorce settlement, for example, the fees are added to the bill. Many people are unable to access information due to the prohibitive cost.

Media, in holding business and wrongdoers to account, is also impeded by the cost — particularly freelance and small operators.