Portfolio — 9 April 2026

The Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Dr Daniel Mulino, released three linked consultation papers on 9 April targeting what the portfolio frames as a connected chain of failure in retail financial services: inadequate upstream consumer protections, insufficient regulator visibility, and an under-resourced last-resort compensation mechanism [TA-260409-treasu-710334b41488].

The centrepiece of the upstream reform package is a suite of platform and switching obligations. The government proposes requiring investment platforms to conduct stronger due diligence on listed products, improving ASIC and AFCA visibility into managed investment schemes, and giving consumers additional time to reconsider superannuation switching decisions before they take effect [TA-260409-treasu-710334b41488].

Each of these measures responds directly to the conduct patterns that contributed to the First Guardian and Shield collapses — the same events that generated the special levy controversy the consultation also addresses.

On lead generation, the consultation proposes moving telemarketers who solicit superannuation switches from broad consumer law into AFSL financial services licensing, and potentially restricting their conflicted remuneration arrangements [TA-260409-treasu-710334b41488]. This is a meaningful regulatory escalation: AFSL licensing carries conduct obligations, supervision requirements, and ASIC enforcement exposure that consumer law does not, and the proposal to restrict conflicted remuneration draws directly on the framework applied to financial advisers under earlier reforms.

The Compensation Scheme of Last Resort papers address both the scheme's $150,000 consumer payment cap and the mechanism for funding large sectoral collapses through special levies [TA-260409-treasu-710334b41488]. The existing levy design — illustrated by the $47 million levy imposed following the personal financial advice collapses, which split the cost $20 million against the advice sector and distributed the balance across all retail-facing financial services sectors weighted by ASIC regulatory effort — has attracted industry criticism on cross-subsidisation grounds.

The consultation invites views on whether the current allocation method appropriately distributes the burden or whether a closer nexus between sector and levy should apply.

The six-week consultation window running to mid-May reflects the interdependency of the three papers: the lead generator and platform reforms bear directly on whether major collapses occur at all, and their design will affect how often the Scheme is triggered and at what scale. The portfolio's stated priority is to reduce the incidence of collapse rather than simply improve the post-collapse compensation mechanism, with the minister describing the reform sequence as a priority following First Guardian and Shield.

No prior context candidates were available for this note period.