The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced this Tuesday that AMP Life Limited and AMP Capital Investors Limited have paid penalties of $275,500 and $250,500 respectively to comply with infringement notices issued by the regulator.
AMP Capital is a global investment manager with a large presence in Australia, offering fixed income, equities, and Multi-Asset services. AMP Life, on the other hand, offers life insurance within the country.
According to the statement released by the Australian regulator, it issued infringement notices to the two companies as there were reasonable grounds to believe there were breaches of the ASIC Derivative Transactions (Reporting) Rules 2013.
Those breaches from AMP Capital were between the 31st of March 2016 and the 28th of September 2018, the statement said. In particular, the Aussie watchdog said that the company failed to:
- report information about 140 transactions on 34 separate business days;
- correctly report collateral information about 9,999 transactions on 417 separate business days; and
- take all reasonable steps to ensure that BNP, on behalf of AMP Capital, was reporting information that was complete, accurate, and current.
"ASIC considers that the breaches arose out of administrative failings. However, the duration of each of the reporting failures was significant and the time taken to identify them shows serious inadequacies in AMP Life's and AMP Capital's processes and procedures for monitoring the accuracy of their reporting," the regulator said.
Furthermore, ASIC highlighted that AMP Capital and AMP Life have both taken, and are continuing to take, actions to remedy their reporting systems. To achieve this, they are implementing systems and processes which aim to prevent these type of failures from occurring again.
ASIC: compliance is not an admission of guilt
However, the regulator has pointed out that compliance with the infringement notices is not an admission of guilt or liability. Therefore, AMP Life and AMP Capital are not taken to have contravened the ASIC Rules.
Commenting on the situation, ASIC Commissioner Cathie Armour said in the statement: "the infringement notices issued to AMP Life and AMP Capital are a message to reporting entities to ensure compliance with their reporting and monitoring Obligations under the ASIC Rules."
