Shane
Top Contributor
If you're running an insurance or finance website, this is probably important to you...
A few months ago I made this post on DNT regarding the possibility for insurance & finance website owners to get into strife over their content.
Basically I pointed out the fact that although we're not running our sites as licensed advisers or brokers, we could still be liable for our content.
Well last month I received a letter in the mail from ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) advising that they had concerns with one of my websites.
This was quite a surprise, as I'd never heard of this happening during my 13 years in the industry. I spoke with two directors I know of big financial planning groups, and neither of them had ever heard of ASIC auditing a random website either.
ASIC's concerns were pretty easy for me to address thankfully, and the issues basically related to the fact that I hadn't changed my website sufficiently when I made the switch from being a licensed adviser to merely being a referrer to other advisers.
I had plenty of big disclaimers on the bottom of each page, but this wasn't sufficient.
They had no issues with my actual content (which was nice!) but the point I'm really trying to make here is that ASIC are now looking at our websites.
I've dealt with ASIC's compliance people plenty of times in my career, and they are never easy to deal with! Even as a compliance analyst at one of the world's largest banks I found them painful to deal with, but as a little self-employed website owner they make you feel extremely small and helpless.
So you've been warned. If you're going to build insurance or finance websites, make sure they're fully compliant with the Corporations Act, and in particular the referrer exemptions that form part of that Act.
My letter from ASIC included the following:
"A contravention of this section is punishable by a fine of $5,500 or imprisonment for one year, or both".
No one wants that!
Shane.
A few months ago I made this post on DNT regarding the possibility for insurance & finance website owners to get into strife over their content.
Basically I pointed out the fact that although we're not running our sites as licensed advisers or brokers, we could still be liable for our content.
Well last month I received a letter in the mail from ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) advising that they had concerns with one of my websites.
This was quite a surprise, as I'd never heard of this happening during my 13 years in the industry. I spoke with two directors I know of big financial planning groups, and neither of them had ever heard of ASIC auditing a random website either.
ASIC's concerns were pretty easy for me to address thankfully, and the issues basically related to the fact that I hadn't changed my website sufficiently when I made the switch from being a licensed adviser to merely being a referrer to other advisers.
I had plenty of big disclaimers on the bottom of each page, but this wasn't sufficient.
They had no issues with my actual content (which was nice!) but the point I'm really trying to make here is that ASIC are now looking at our websites.
I've dealt with ASIC's compliance people plenty of times in my career, and they are never easy to deal with! Even as a compliance analyst at one of the world's largest banks I found them painful to deal with, but as a little self-employed website owner they make you feel extremely small and helpless.
So you've been warned. If you're going to build insurance or finance websites, make sure they're fully compliant with the Corporations Act, and in particular the referrer exemptions that form part of that Act.
My letter from ASIC included the following:
"A contravention of this section is punishable by a fine of $5,500 or imprisonment for one year, or both".
No one wants that!
Shane.
