One of Australia’s major regulators will soon undergo significant changes. 

A shake-up of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is due to be announced next month, including measures to streamline enforcement, cut bureaucracy and deliver faster decision-making.

The number of ASIC divisions will be cut. The regulator’s work is currently broken into multiple supervisory, enforcement and operations groups.

Additionally, more money will be directed towards filling what ASIC chair Joe Longo calls the agency’s “technology debt”. 

He says changes will be made to streamline operations as well, focusing primarily on financial services and wealth, and its associated enforcement group, along with some changes to markets and markets enforcement.

Mr Longo says ASIC needs to make its law enforcement less “whack-a-mole” and “silo-ed”, and more strategic.

“Part of this reorganisation is stepping back and say how can we reorganise ourselves to enable us to be faster? What does faster mean? It means making quicker decisions,” Mr Longo has told reporters. 

More details are accessible here.