Submission – Enhanced data collection for managed investment schemes
The Super Members Council welcomes the opportunity to respond to Treasury’s consultation on enhanced data collection for managed investment schemes (MISs).
SMC supports regulators having the timely, reliable and sufficiently granular information they need to identify emerging risks, target supervision, and intervene sooner. Treasury should proceed with stronger registration and tiered quarterly reporting for registered MISs, where the connection to retail investor protection is clearest. For unregistered wholesale MISs, Treasury should first clearly identify the information gaps in the existing framework, explain why they matter, and demonstrate how the proposed reporting would enable regulatory action that reduces harm. The framework should also operate on a collect-once, basis, with information shared safely across agencies and duplicative reporting removed.
Better data is necessary, but visibility alone will not protect people. Treasury should explain what interventions better information would enable, whether ASIC’s existing powers are sufficient to act when risks are detected, and what complementary reforms are needed to address conflicted transactions, harmful distribution practices and weak accountability. Data and transparency measures should complement, rather than substitute for, effective conduct, governance and accountability obligations. Each transparency obligation should therefore have a clearly identified purpose and regulatory use.
SMC broadly supports Treasury’s proposed direction. Our six recommendations apply a clear principle: reporting should be strongest where Australians’ retirement savings face the greatest risk, and each new obligation should have an identified use. Treasury should proceed with enhanced registration and tiered quarterly reporting for registered MISs, establish basic visibility of unregistered MISs through commencement and cessation notifications, and reserve any further recurrent reporting for identified higher-risk cohorts where Treasury can demonstrate the information gap, the regulatory response it would support and the resulting consumer protection benefit. The test for a successful framework should be whether it gives regulators both the information and the practical capacity to prevent another Shield or First Guardian.
