Compliance Programs Introduced in Response to Enforcement by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission

This article reports the results of a study of compliance programs introduced or amended in response to enforcement by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), whether required by court order or as part of an enforceable undertaking (EU). Most of the compliance programs involved companies in the financial services industry. The article identifies the benefits and challenges associated with effectively designing and implementing a compliance program as well as the previous research on compliance programs in Australia. It then examines compliance programs introduced by court order as well as compliance programs introduced or amended as part of an EU for the five-year period 2016 to 2020. An issue of concern is that reports published by ASIC on compliance with EUs contain very little substantive detail on the implementation or revision of compliance programs required by EUs, making it difficult to assess why a compliance program was or was not deemed adequate to comply with the EU. This limited transparency has implications for accountability, deterrence and public confidence.