Australia's corporate regulator removed or restricted 87 individuals and businesses from providing financial services in the 2025-26 financial year, up from 58. Administrative enforcement outcomes reached 150, it said today (Monday), against 105 a year earlier.
Every one of those outcomes is a decision the Australian Securities and Investments Commission takes on its own authority.
A banning order or a licence cancellation does not require a court, which means an Australian financial services licensee can lose the permissions its business runs on without a case ever being filed.
That route reaches CFD issuers through the same licence regime. ASIC's review of 52 CFD issuers returned AU$40 million to investors through administrative intervention rather than litigation, in a year when contracts for difference drove roughly a third of the regulator's record fine haul.
The Half of the Record That Never Reaches a Courtroom
ASIC secured AU$830 million (US$579.3 million) in civil penalties over the same 12 months. One case supplied AU$300.2 million of that, the penalty against collapsed CFD issuer Union Standard and its former authorised representatives EuropeFX and TradeFred.
The administrative column is where the count grew. ASIC Chairwoman Sarah Court said the powers "can often be deployed more swiftly than or ahead of court action."
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Of the 150 outcomes, 77 were permanent bannings or cancellations, covering 31 individuals and 46 organizations. Six people were banned for 10 years and 31 for shorter terms.
The permanence rate differs by sector. It reached 61% of financial services outcomes and 89% of credit outcomes.
ASIC has used the tool at scale before, moving to wind up 95 financial services firms in a single sweep that included several closed CFD brokers.
Credit Moved the Other Way
Credit was the only category to fall. Removals and restrictions there dropped to 27 from 33, even as the financial services figure rose by half.
Director disqualifications more than doubled, to 36 from 14. Eighteen of them ran the maximum five-year term.
The direction of travel matches an agency that has been willing to go further than European regulators on retail derivatives.
Its inbound workload grew too. ASIC logged a 28% rise in the issues raised in misconduct reports over the second half of 2025.
Where the Advice Bans Came From
Two collapsed investment vehicles account for a visible share of the adviser bans. ASIC banned 15 advisers connected to the Shield Master Fund and the First Guardian Master Fund during the reporting year.
Both sit inside an enforcement effort the regulator has valued at about AU$1.1 billion across roughly 11,000 investors, and which has since reached the auditors who signed off on First Guardian.
Those 15 advisers are about a sixth of everyone ASIC pushed out of financial services in the year.
