ASIC’s regulatory costs

This page provides an overview of recoverable regulatory costs.

Under the ASIC industry funding model, the Australian Government determines our budget. We then recover our regulatory costs from the industry sectors we regulate, through a combination of:

  • industry funding levies charged to 52 subsectors – the levies consist of:
    • general industry levies (known as ‘cost recovery levies’), which are charged for ongoing regulatory activities that are consistent with the Australian Government Charging Framework. These activities relate to supervision and surveillance, enforcement, industry engagement, education, guidance, and policy advice
    • statutory levies, which are charged for activities the Australian Government has decided should be cross-subsidised between industry subsectors. These activities relate to:
      • the Enforcement Special Account (ESA)
      • education
      • administration of the unclaimed money regime
      • the North Queensland insurance aggregator
      • crowd-sourced funding (CSF) implementation
      • the whistleblower legal framework,
      • credit rating agencies, and
  • cost recovery fees (known as ‘fees for service’), which are charged for user-initiated, transaction-based activities where we provide a specific service to individual entities. These activities include licensing, professional registration, applications for relief and review of corporate finance transaction documents.

Exemptions to the industry funding model

Table 1 sets out the costs that are exempt from the industry funding model, and how these costs will be otherwise recovered.

Table 1: Costs that are exemptions to the industry funding model

Cost Description
Costs recovered by APRA The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) will continue to recover the costs of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal (SCT) through the Financial Institutions Supervisory Levies until 30 June 2023.
Regulation of registered charities and not-for-profits Entities that are registered under the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Act 2012 are exempt and do not have to pay industry funding levies: see regulation 5B of the ASIC Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy Regulations 2017 (Cost Recovery Levy Regulations).

We do not recover the portion of our costs (estimated to be approximately $2.5 million per year) relating to these entities through industry funding levies, and therefore the exemption does not affect the amount to be paid by other entities in the relevant subsectors.

Other The Cost Recovery Levy Regulations prescribe that certain amounts are not part of ASIC’s regulatory costs and therefore will not be recovered under the industry funding regime. These amounts include the costs of:
  • operating the SCT
  • operating the Companies Auditors Disciplinary Board (CADB)
  • operating the committees convened on an ad-hoc basis to consider disciplinary matters relating to registered liquidators (registered liquidators disciplinary committees)
  • maintaining and operating ASIC’s public registers
  • regulating self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) auditors, and
  • preliminary investigations and reports by registered liquidators into the failure of a company with few or no assets. 
Last updated: 28/06/2023 05:45