Product Intervention Powers: a Legal, Comparative & Policy Analysis

This report responds to Recommendation 22 of the Financial System Inquiry Final Report recommending ASIC have a Product Intervention Power (PIPs).1 Product intervention powers are complementary to disclosure and empower a regulator to intervene in product design or distribution and sales to prevent consumer detriment. While the FSI suggested features PIPs might have, it left many aspects for implementation, such as those addressed in this report. For brevity’s sake we take as read chapter 4 of the FSI Final Report and assume some knowledge of PIPs in the jurisdictions we use for comparison. Where we have assumed too much, we are entirely content to provide further information and reasoning on request. Accordingly, the rest of this report addresses the questions asked of us by letter from ASIC’s Consumer Advisory Panel dated 23 January 2015 and provides recommendations for PIPs implementation in Australia. For those with limited time, we suggest reading the Executive Summary, our Recommendations and the Conclusion.

Originally Published: 
02/04/2015