The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has imposed additional conditions on Macquarie Bank’s Australian financial services licence, following what the regulator described as “multiple and significant compliance failures.”
ASIC Imposes Additional Conditions on Macquarie Bank’s Australian Financial Services Licence
ASIC added that one of the compliance failures went undetected for over a decade.
They relate to Macquarie’s futures dealing operations and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives trade reporting.
ASIC’s action requires the bank to develop a remediation plan, appoint an independent expert to review the plan and assess the effectiveness of the remediation in preventing future compliance breaches.
“Our intervention underscores our concern with the recurrent nature of Macquarie’s failures, which were caused by ineffective supervision and weak compliance and control management,” said ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant.
Constant added that the additional licence conditions are a “significant administrative action to ensure Macquarie comprehensively addresses ASIC’s concerns,” and that they “cannot be a piece-meal or band-aid fix.”
ASIC cited “poor change management practices, unclear roles and responsibilities, and an incomplete understanding of its own processes and controls” as key issues.
The regulator noted the misreporting of more than 375,000 OTC derivative transactions and failures in preventing and detecting suspicious trading activity on the ASX24 market.
One incident involved 11 suspicious orders placed on the electricity futures market shortly after ASIC had already penalised the bank A$4.995 million in September 2024 for similar misconduct.
