ASIC has signalled a tougher era for financial advice, lead generators, and super trustees as it intensifies enforcement following the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds. The move comes at a time of heightened retirement anxiety, with ASIC research showing only a third of pre‑retirees feel confident about a financially comfortable retirement.
Speaking at the Professional Planner Advice Policy Summit in Canberra, ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland (pictured) said “addressing the conduct that led to the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds is one of ASIC’s biggest priorities.”
More than 11,000 people invested over $1 billion in the schemes as they tried to build their retirement savings.
Kirkland described the Shield and First Guardian investigations as “among the most complex and resource‑intensive in ASIC’s history,” with “12 cases underway against 21 defendants” and further actions still in the pipeline. ASIC currently has nearly 50 staff working on 26 investigations tied to the scandals.
Central to ASIC’s current agenda is the way consumers are steered into super and investment products via high‑risk lead‑generation and super‑switching models. The regulator has launched a new review of financial advice licensees that use lead generation services, aimed at uncovering business models driven by click‑bait advertising, cold-calling and high-pressure tactics.
The review sits alongside a broader government push to tighten oversight of managed investment schemes and advice channels, informed by ASIC’s recent investigations into misconduct.
ASIC is “encouraging consumers to exercise caution when engaging with businesses who use lead generation” and has published a list of businesses, websites, authorised representatives, and licensees involved in lead generation on its Moneysmart website,” Kirkland said. “While ASIC stresses that entities on the list are not assumed to have done anything wrong, it has warned that lead generators who mislead consumers, apply undue pressure or operate without a licence “may be contravening the law.”
Kirkland welcomed federal government proposals to strengthen oversight and governance of managed investment schemes, expand ASIC’s data‑collection powers and improve visibility of super-switching.
Forthcoming consultations will canvass measures “to introduce a waiting period to slow down potentially high-risk super-switching,” tighten platform governance and “stop inappropriate lead generation,” including possible anti‑hawking changes.
Together, these measures would give regulators a clearer view of suspicious switching patterns and make it harder for fringe operators to exploit regulatory gaps.
Alongside enforcement and reform, ASIC is rebuilding its consumer-facing tools, including revitalising its Moneysmart resources and super and retirement calculators, and running campaigns to counter misleading online promotions.
Kirkland warned that Australians are increasingly targeted by “an array of ads on social media, increasingly generated by AI”, making independent, plain‑English guidance more critical than ever.
He reminded the industry that making the system safer is a “collective responsibility”, underpinned by basic expectations of “expertise, integrity, diligence, and due care.”
Firms with robust processes to meet their legal obligations “have nothing to fear from ASIC,” he said, but those that fail consumers “should expect to encounter the full force of the law.”
The Shield and First Guardian fallout now sits squarely within ASIC’s 2026 enforcement agenda, which also targets private credit practices, misleading pricing, and financial reporting failures as cost-of-living pressures bite.
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