The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is continuing its drive to improve compliance amongst liquidators with respect to their obligations to lodge various documents with the regulator and publish notices in connection with their appointments.

Recently, ASIC accepted voluntary undertakings (VU) from two Western Australian liquidators to engage an independent expert to provide compliance training to the liquidators and their staff and to separately engage an independent quality reviewer to review three randomly selected (by ASIC) external administration files to test for compliance with lodgment and other obligations.

The VU’s arose out of ASIC’s industry wide compliance testing operation which identifies non-compliance amongst insolvency practitioners.

The acceptance of VU’s is demonstrative of ASIC’s willingness to work with insolvency practitioners to promote trust and confidence in the profession in connection with its compliance drive.  As to the program’s effectiveness, according to an ASIC press release issued on 21 November 2016, the program has so far shown increased compliance in the insolvency profession for both the holding annual meetings of creditors and publishing notices of initial creditor meetings.

Insolvency Practitioners should always take care to put in place adequate systems to ensure compliance with any ASIC lodgment obligations and other appointment related publication requirements.

If any insolvency practitioners do have questions about their compliance obligations, whether related to lodgments, publications or otherwise, please contact ERA Legal.