The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has decided to develop a regulatory guide for "review and remediation" programmes conducted by Australian financial services licensees that provide financial advice.

Over the last few years ASIC has negotiated a number of major review-and-remediation programmes by financial advice firms. These have been large scale exercises to review personal financial advice provided to high-net-worth and other retail clients and to compensate those clients for loss that flowed from non-compliant advice or, in some cases, fraud.

A number of other licensees have also identified instances of deficient advice and have initiated smaller, more targeted review and remediation programmes in response.

ASIC has come round to the view that all licensees that provide personal advice to retail clients should have robust R&R programmes in place to protect their clients. It wants all such programmes to be consistent with one another and 'transparent.'

The new regulatory guide will build on ASIC’s Regulatory Guide no 165, entitled "Licensing: Internal and external dispute resolution." (See also Regulatory Guide 139 Approval and oversight of external dispute resolution schemes). A consultative process is in the offing.