Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) chair Joe Longo has linked the regulator’s push for more visible enforcement to the way insurance customers judge the industry’s reliability after major events. Speaking at the Financial Counselling Australia Conference in Cairns on May 7, Longo said “confidence is the true currency of the financial system” and warned that financial services “just doesn’t work as intended” when that confidence is damaged.
To illustrate the point, Longo used scenarios drawn from everyday experience, including general insurance. “Consider a bank scam victim who refuses to transact online after their money was stolen. Or a natural disaster survivor who opts out of insurance entirely after their claim is unfairly rejected. The people in this room know all too well what that broken trust looks like. It walks through your doors every day,” he said.
Longo said that history shows public inquiries and visible consequences can restore confidence after major failures and argued that today’s regulators must adopt a similar mindset. “It is not enough to enforce the rules quietly – confidence depends on people seeing them enforced. That means regulators cannot work from behind closed doors – and watchdogs need to both bark and bite to be effective,” he said.
Longo reminded his audience that ASIC has evolved from a corporate registry‑style body to a national conduct regulator with responsibilities that extend across insurance and other financial sectors. He noted that ASIC assumed responsibility for consumer protection in financial services in 1998 and for consumer credit in 2010, giving it reach across corporations, insurance and superannuation, credit and banking, and financial advice. This breadth, he said, allows the regulator to address outcomes “wherever Australians interact with the financial system” – including where customers buy, renew, and claim on insurance products. The message is that conduct affecting confidence, particularly in claims and customer outcomes, falls within ASIC’s enforcement and policy focus as well as prudential oversight by other regulators.
Longo described a shift during his tenure to make ASIC “modern, confident, and ambitious,” including increased enforcement activity. According to ASIC figures, the regulator has more than doubled the number of formal investigations it undertakes each year since Longo became chair and has more than quadrupled the total value of penalties obtained. So far, this financial year, ASIC says it has secured more than $411 million in penalties, with about $421 million returned to investors in connection with investigations into the Shield Master Fund and First Guardian Master Fund. Separate enforcement data for July to December 2025 shows $349.8 million in civil penalties imposed by courts over that six‑month period, the highest half‑year total reported by ASIC. Those matters included actions against large banks and superannuation trustees.
Cbus’s $23.5 million penalty for serious failures processing members’ death benefits and insurance claims is a recent case involving insurance taken to court by ASIC. The same reporting period also recorded penalties against ANZ, RAMS Financial Group, and NAB for misconduct and hardship failures in banking and home lending and $583 million in remediation, refunds, and related payments linked to ASIC’s work. Longo said ASIC is now “in court somewhere in the country nearly every single day of the week,” spanning Magistrates, Supreme, Federal, and High Courts, and acknowledged that some matters, such as responsible lending cases, are complex and carry litigation risk. He said the regulator would continue to pursue “hard cases where success is not guaranteed” when it considers consumer harm to be significant.
Longo also highlighted ASIC’s practice, introduced early in his term, of publishing annual enforcement priorities. Each year the deputy chair outlines these priorities at ASIC’s annual forum. He set out three reasons for this approach: providing clarity on how a publicly funded regulator uses its resources, creating deterrence by signalling the areas most likely to attract action, and holding ASIC to account for doing what it has said it will do. “Being a regulator is ultimately about making choices. Every day, we have to make difficult choices about what we litigate, what we investigate,” Longo said. With limited capacity, he said, transparency about those choices is central to public confidence. The presence of insurance‑related topics on ASIC’s priority list – such as claims handling, add‑on products, or treatment of vulnerable customers – signals that issues in those areas are more likely to result in court proceedings than in purely informal engagement with firms.
While Longo’s speech focused heavily on hardship, small business, and credit, he linked those themes to the broader financial sector, including insurance. He pointed to ASIC’s work on financial hardship, supported by information from financial counsellors, which ASIC says has contributed to changes in how some home lenders respond to customers in difficulty. He also referred to ASIC’s decision to appeal its case against funeral expenses provider Youpla, saying this was intended to send “a strong deterrence message to anyone seeking to mislead Aboriginal consumers.” Expanding ASIC’s on‑the‑ground presence has also occurred. Longo highlighted the opening of a new Darwin office, moving from a single staff member in the Northern Territory to a local team with “broad expertise and deep local knowledge,” in response to harm experienced by First Nations consumers.
Alongside conduct and hardship, Longo identified technology‑enabled scams as an area of focus. Separate ASIC data shows that from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025, the regulator coordinated the removal of 11,964 phishing and investment scam websites, a 90% increase on the previous 12 months, bringing total takedowns since 2023 to more than 25,000 sites. In 2025, more than 1,100 online investment scam advertisements on social media were also removed. Longo said artificial intelligence has “turbocharged” online threats and noted that with the spread of agentic AI, “these numbers will only go in one direction – up.”
According to the National Anti‑Scam Centre, Australians lost $2.18 billion to scams in 2025, including $837.7 million in investment scams. ASIC has signalled that it expects financial institutions, including insurers, to invest in prevention, detection, and customer support in response to these trends, rather than relying solely on exclusions and dispute processes once losses occur. Longo closed by reiterating that ASIC’s transformation will continue, and said the move toward more visible, case‑based, and technology‑focused regulation is, in his view, important for sustaining confidence in the wider financial system, including insurance.
