As part of the conditions associated with holding an AFS licence or ACL, the licence holder is required to have various compliance measures in place, which need to be documented.
In addition, as part of the relevant licence application process, certain disclosures would have been made to ASIC about the nature and frequency of compliance reviews.
To manage the ongoing compliance with the AFS licence or ACL conditions licensees often appoint a dedicated compliance officer. However, for start-up or smaller licensees, this is often prohibitively expensive, given the size of their business. Whist many licensees intend to appoint a dedicated compliance officer in time, the compliance obligations need to be managed in the interim.
MLC Legal offer a number of compliance related services, including:
- External compliance reviews and audits which assess and report on the effectiveness of the compliance framework of the licensee
- Documentation of compliance procedures tailored to your business
- Preparation of stand alone compliance procedures, including:
- Compliance arrangements
- Breach reporting
- Service provider policy
- Financial resources policy
- Dispute resolution procedures
- Responsible manager – appointment and training
- Representatives – appointment, monitoring and supervising
- Training of representatives
- Risk management policy
- IT resources policy
- Human resources policy
- Conflicts of interest policy
- AML/CTF compliance program
- Compliance committee services, including:
- Acting as a compliance committee member
- Assessment and appointment of compliance committee members
- Preparation of compliance committee charters
- Management of compliance committee meetings
- Compliance management, which can include:
- Reporting and notification requirements for regulatory bodies and external dispute resolution schemes, including APRA, ASIC, AUSTRAC and FOS/COSL
- Recording, assessment and reporting of breaches, complaints and conflicts of interest
- Compliance with the relevant AFS licence or ACL financial requirements, including net tangible asset, surplus liquid funds and cash needs requirements
- Training requirements for responsible managers and representatives, including preparation of annual training plans and maintenance of training registers