According to ASIC’s media release, under the additional licence conditions, Macquarie needs to:
- provide a remediation plan tackling the compliance failures in their futures dealing business and OTC derivatives trade reporting functions, as well as the root causes of these issues
- retain an independent expert to review and report on whether the remediation plan has dealt with the failures and their root causes
- make the independent expert assess whether the bank’s remediation activities will be operationally effective in preventing, detecting, and responding to any similar future problems in its futures dealing and OTC derivatives businesses
“Our intervention underscores our concern with the recurrent nature of Macquarie’s failures, which were caused by ineffective supervision and weak compliance and control management,” Constant said in the media release.
ASIC said the bank’s issues relating to control management included deficient change management practices, unclear roles and responsibilities, and an imperfect understanding of its data governance processes and controls.
“Macquarie must take responsibility and put in place appropriate action to remediate the repeated failures and underlying governance and supervisory failures,” Constant said in the media release.
“We were particularly disappointed that Macquarie failed to prevent 11 suspicious orders being placed on the electricity futures market via Macquarie terminals shortly after ASIC had referred similar failures to the Markets Disciplinary Panel which fined the bank just under $5 million,” Constant added in the media release.