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ASIC Corporate Insolvency Update – Issue 38

Issue 38, December 2025

Registered liquidator registration renewals

The next cycle of renewals for liquidators registered before 1 March 2017 will commence early next year. Around 75% of registered liquidators must renew their registrations in the 2026 calendar year.

Form RL05 Application for renewal of registration by a registered liquidator will be available on the liquidator portal two months before your registration anniversary date. Due to the anticipated volume of applications, we encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible to allow ASIC sufficient time to review your application.

Application fees

Lodging your application early will result in a lower application fee.

The current fees are:

  • $1,720 if lodged more than one month before the renewal date, and
  • $1,920 if lodged within one month before the renewal date.

Assessment of your renewal application

When lodging your application, you must complete an insurance questionnaire as well as provide a copy of your current certificate of currency (COC).

We review the questionnaire and COC to assess the adequacy of your professional indemnity and fidelity insurance against the guidance provided in Regulatory Guide 258 Registered liquidators: Registration, ongoing obligations, disciplinary actions and insurance requirements (RG 258).

To avoid delays in processing your application, please ensure that:

  • you complete the insurance questionnaire accurately
  • you are listed as the ‘Insured Party’ on the COC, and
  • the COC clearly states that you are covered for any work you may undertake in your capacity as a registered liquidator.

Upcoming webinars to help registered liquidators prepare applications and report alleged misconduct

We will be hosting webinars for registered liquidators in the first half of next year covering:

  • applying for assistance to obtain books and records (including the Report on company activities and property (ROCAP)) and seeking funding from the Assetless Administration Fund, and
  • reporting alleged offences or misconduct to ASIC.

The webinars, and supporting informational materials, will focus on issues for registered liquidators to consider when submitting applications and reporting alleged misconduct and offences to ASIC. Our aim is to:

  • inform registered liquidators about the factors we consider when assessing applications and reports, and
  • increase the likelihood that we have sufficient information and evidence to assess and action (including taking enforcement action when appropriate).

Our goal is to make the processes easier and more transparent for liquidators, and reduce the time needed to assess and act on their applications and reports.

We will provide more information about the webinars soon, including information about how to register. If there are questions or content that you consider it would be useful to cover at the webinars, please email this to ISRandSSR.Questions@asic.gov.au.

This is part of our ongoing work to respond to feedback and submissions to the Parliamentary Joint Committee Inquiry into Corporate Insolvency on the cost of investigating and reporting alleged misconduct and offences to ASIC, and the enforcement action ASIC takes.

Other actions we have taken so far include:

  • re-issuing Regulatory Guide 16 External administrators and controllers: Reporting of possible offences and misconduct (RG 16) and emphasising that registered liquidators should exercise their professional judgement when deciding the extent of investigations they undertake and reporting alleged misconduct and offences to ASIC
  • stopping automated requests for a supplementary statutory report following system-based assessments of an initial statutory report (ISR), after consultation with registered liquidators, professional bodies and academics
  • removing a small number of repetitive questions or unnecessary questions from the ISR
  • issuing a new ISR user guide, and
  • providing a dedicated mailbox for registered liquidators (ISRandSSR.Questions@asic.gov.au) to raise queries with ASIC about preparing and lodging reports of alleged misconduct and offences.

Increase in RAEA requests and launch of centralised RAEA compliance mailbox

Registered liquidators request assistance from ASIC via the Request Assistance for External Administration (RAEA) program when officers or individuals related to an entity under external administration fail to comply with legislative requirements.

In the 2024–25 financial year, we received 1,806 RAEA requests from external administrators. This is a nearly fivefold increase when compared to the 2020–21 financial year (314 RAEA requests). RAEA requests increased by an average of 57% year-on-year in the past two financial years.

We have received 531 RAEA requests between 1 July and 30 September 2025. This equates to an average of 177 per month.

This increase in RAEA requests is impacting our ability to consider, assess and respond to requests, resulting in delays. We acknowledge the impact of delayed responses on registered liquidators and are taking a range of actions to respond to this increase in RAEA requests.

To support registered liquidators to be able to make queries about RAEA requests, we recently introduced a new centralised mailbox (RAEA.Compliance@asic.gov.au). We ask registered liquidators and their staff to only use this email address for urgent RAEA requests where:

  • the case officer is not yet known, and
  • you clearly explain the basis for the urgency.

ASIC staff managing the compliance aspect of the RAEA program may also contact you directly from this email address to provide specific details and/or check if you still require assistance.

Electronic signatures now accepted for ROCAP

As a result of our recent regulatory simplification work, directors and officers can now sign Form 507 Report on company activities and property electronically and lodge a copy of the form via the liquidator portal as is currently done.

The electronic signing method on the form must comply with our requirements relating to signatures.

The accepted methods of signing documents to be lodged with ASIC are set out in Document Lodgement Requirements. We have provided general guidance for signatures on the ASIC website. This information can also be found on the Form 507 page.

For the ROCAP, acceptable signatures include handwritten signatures on paper documents and electronic signatures. You can create an electronic signature by inserting an image of a person’s usual handwritten signature (the image must be a true representation of a handwritten signature).

We have informed the insolvency software providers about the use of digital or electronic methods of signing the ROCAP.

Cyber and fraud risk management in insolvency services

Technology-enabled crime such as fraud, scams and cyber attacks are areas of increasing risk. In 2024-25, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) received over 84,700 cybercrime reports to ReportCyber – on average, one report every six minutes.

Registered liquidators and their firms are not immune to the risk of fraud, scam and cyber attacks. These incidents can erode trust, compromise data security and recoveries, and expose practitioners to reputational and regulatory risks.

We encourage you to:

  • maintain an understanding of the threat environment and better practices to respond to those threats, and
  • review your systems and internal controls on a regular basis to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.

To address risks relating to fraud and scams, you should review information on the Scamwatch website to ensure you are aware of the current types of scams and how to spot and avoid them. You should also consider the appropriateness of your policies and practices relating to:

  • segregation of duties
  • access to systems
  • delegations of authority
  • joint versus single authorisation
  • documentation (including supporting documents) of transactions, and
  • frequency of oversight or review via reconciliations

To address risks relating to cyber attacks, you should review the information available on the website of the ACSC, including the Essential Eight. These are eight practical mitigation strategies that firms and practitioners should implement to protect themselves against cyber threats. We encourage you to subscribe to the ACSC alert service to receive the latest alerts as they are published, and regularly review the ACSC advisories.

For smaller firms and sole practitioners, another useful resource is the small business cyber security guide. You may also consider accessing the CyberWardens service offered by the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia and/or the Small Business Cyber Resilience Service offered by IDCARE. The IDCARE service is free for businesses with an Australian Business Number (ABN) that have less than 19 full time equivalent employees.

If you are impacted by a cyber attack or fraud incident in your practice, please contact ASIC as early as possible. Early engagement enables ASIC to:

  • engage and assist where necessary
  • understand the issues affecting you and your practice, and
  • facilitate timely communication to the profession, where appropriate, to heighten awareness of threats.

Small business restructuring

We continue to monitor the use of the small business restructuring (SBR) regime. Our recent monitoring of SBR appointments has identified several specific compliance concerns. We have outlined reminders in relation to these issues below and are also engaging with practitioners individually about some of these matters.

Company directorships – eligibility criteria

On the date a restructuring practitioner is appointed to a company, no director (current or in the last 12 months) can have been a director of another company under restructuring or simplified liquidation in the last seven years: see section 453C(1)(b) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Corporations Act) and Regulation 5.3B.03(2) of the Corporations Regulations 2001 (Regulations). An exception applies if that company was a related body corporate and the appointment occurred within 20 business days before the day on which the eligibility criteria are met: see Regulation 5.3B.03(4) of the Regulations.

Employee entitlements

Reports of misconduct from former and current employees indicate that some companies may have owed employee entitlements before proposing an SBR plan.

Registered liquidators should take appropriate steps to verify that all eligibility criteria are satisfied and not rely solely on directors’ statements.

Further information may become available by the time the proposal statement is issued that was not known at the date of appointment. The restructuring practitioner should re-assess and document their findings that the company meets the eligibility criteria and satisfied other requirements at the time the declaration is made.

Restructuring receipts and payments

Funds for remuneration paid upfront into a restructuring practitioner’s trust account or firm bank account must be recorded in the general ledger of the restructuring Form 5603 End of administration return. This is the case even if you did not open an administration bank account. The use of funds held in trust or firm accounts is still considered a payment by the company. If you were paid restructuring remuneration during the plan, then you should disclose that in Form 5603 for the plan period, with the correct description.

Restriction on appointments

Restructuring and plan practitioners are company officers: see sections 9AD and 532(6) of the Corporations Act. If the restructuring ends (completed or terminated), you cannot be subsequently appointed as liquidator unless the court grants leave: see section 532(2)(c)(i) of the Corporations Act. This also applies to anyone who was an officer in the preceding two years, and to your partners or employees: see section 532(2A)(c)(vi) of the Corporations Act.

Reminder: Engage with AFCA as required

It has been raised with us that some registered liquidators may not have properly engaged with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) as required and/or not responded to AFCA’s queries.

In external administrations where a company is an Australian financial services (AFS) licensee and a member of AFCA, AFCA may contact registered liquidators for information. You should reasonably engage with AFCA as you would with any other key stakeholder or creditor.

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Insolvency statistics

Our insolvency statistics show that 3,556 companies entered external administration during the first three months of the 2025–26 financial year, down 2.1% from the 3,633 companies recorded for the same period in 2024–25.

As at 30 September 2025, there were 3,619,913 registered companies. The ratio of companies entering external administration in the 12 months to 30 September 2025 compared to the number registered (0.40%) is up from the 12 months to 30 September 2024 (0.36%), but still well below the prior peaks in the 2011–12 and 2012–13 financial years of 0.56% and 0.53%, respectively.

During the first quarter of the 2025–26 financial year, the most common industries for appointments were construction (24%), accommodation and food services (16%), other/non-described services (11%), professional, scientific and technical services (7%) and retail trade (6%). For more information, please see insolvency statistics on the ASIC website.

Contacts

Email support and contact details for ASIC team members for each state and territory are available on the Contacts page.