We provided detailed feedback to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on Report 813, focusing on simplifying regulation, improving accessibility of information, and easing interactions with ASIC. 

Our submission covered improvements in guidance materials, legislative instruments, digital processes, and inter-agency collaboration to reduce the regulatory burden.

Our key points focused on:

• Balance in guidance approach: ASIC should maintain a mix of principles-based and prescriptive guidance to ensure clarity and avoid a compliance-only mindset. Consistent navigation tools like summaries and flowcharts are essential for accessibility.
• Digital lodgement and form simplification: ASIC should review all forms for simplification, consistency, and enable digital lodgement with electronic signatures.
• Maintaining expert human contact: Despite digital advances, ASIC must retain knowledgeable staff and topic specialists to assist with complex queries, ensuring efficient resolution and user confidence.
• Uplifting ASIC registers: Immediate priorities include linking director IDs to companies and removing fees for register searches. Registers should improve search functionality to allow locating professionals by firm, location, or other criteria, supporting compliance and public trust.
• Cross-government collaboration: ASIC should work closely with Commonwealth, State, and Territory agencies to reduce regulatory burdens and improve data sharing, including embedding digital ID for streamlined interactions.
• Transparency and accountability: As a cost-recovery agency, ASIC should set clear outcomes and budgets for simplification initiatives, measure progress with public reporting, and provide levy estimates by sector at the financial year start.

The key request is to work towards a goal of businesses and individuals having a single access point for their interactions with government which requires the ability for individuals to use a digital ID.  We acknowledged the roll out of digital ID sits with the Department of Finance and called on ASIC to consider, as they simplify their processes, how digital ID can be embedded as it becomes available from the end of 2026.