Solve for all product obligations including Design and Distribution Obligations (DDO) with Skyjed.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has released its corporate plan and will continue to take action to protect consumers from harm. This will include using the full suite of regulatory tools available to ASIC to effectively respond or prevent potential wrongdoings. This includes using product intervention powers and enforcing compliance with the Design and Distribution Obligations (DDO).
Reducing the risk of consumer harm through product design and distribution obligations is one of the top priorities included in the ASIC's corporate plan for the next four years.
“ASIC will take strong and targeted enforcement action to protect consumers and investors and to maintain trust and integrity in the financial system,” Chairman Joe Longo has stated.
ASIC’s Corporate Plan’s includes four external priorities and eight core strategic actions.
The ASIC corporate plan will undertake “targeted risk-based surveillances” as part of its design and distribution obligations reforms project and will take action where necessary on key financial products including insurance, credit offerings and superannuation.
Furthermore, ASIC will analyse consumer experiences with respect to home insurance claims, especially disasters and identify poor claims conduct or unfair practices. This will include engaging with insurers over pricing and unfair claims practices.
ASIC has also listed other priorities including sustainable finance and protecting consumers especially retirees from unsound superannuation products or managed investments and financial advice.
“Companies are increasingly reporting sustainability-related risks and opportunities as these become an important focus for investors and stakeholders,” it says. “With sustainability-related investment growing, there is an increased risk of greenwashing.”
The ASIC corporate plan is available here.
What is DDO?
DDO was designed to ensure that a customer centric approach is embedded into every financial organisation as part of a Product Governance framework and to ensure the protection of consumers and product trust.
Financial products need to be designed to meet the needs of each target market and ensure they are suitable. They also need to be distributed in a targeted way. Monitoring and reporting need to be in place to ensure that if products digress from the target market determination, financial organisations have a way to monitor this and take action.
ASIC will continue to take the action required to prevent consumer harm and cease poor conduct through continual surveillance and reviews.
Under DDO, financial organisations (product issuers) are required to create a Target Market Determination (TMDs) in relation to their financial products. In creating a TMD, issuers must consider the design of their products (including the key attributes) and determine an appropriate target market for the product by ensuring that the key attributes of the product are likely to be consistent with the likely objectives, including the financial situation and needs of the target market.
Recent enforcement action in July 2022 shows the importance of having appropriate TMDs and a DDO centred product governance and monitoring solution in place prior to distributing financial products.
Skyjed has a complete end-to-end DDO solution available for Issuers and Distributors including the designing, sharing, and monitoring of new and existing product target market determinations and reviews.
With several features designed to save time and enable your teams to work smarter Skyjed’s solution meets all your product governance and management of DDO including target market design and monitoring, governance reporting, automated reminders and planning, automated triggers for monitoring your TMDs and actions/risks management plus more.
At the time of implementing DDO, Head of Strategy & Product, Michael McCormick validated that “Skyjed has reduced the amount of time spent on manual processes and implementation by 50%. They make ongoing management and monitoring of the Product Governance Lifecycle Framework and DDO very easy. The Skyjed solution will do most of the work for us...”
Download our Skyjed Overview to learn more about what some of our financial services customers are saying.
About Skyjed
Skyjed is an AI-powered digital product lifecycle management and product governance SaaS platform that acts as the single source of truth for product design, health, performance, and governance.
Skyjed is an ISO-27001 accredited solution. It is designed to drive growth and enable product teams to strategically design and monitor products with automation smarts and faster insights to make data-driven decisions with confidence.
Skyjed’s commitment to innovation and our customers has been rewarded with several industry recognitions including Technology of Year – Finalist in the UK Tech & Innovation Awards 2022, Finalist in the AFR Most Innovative Company 2022 and AFR Sustainability Awards 2022 and Regtech Female Founder of the Year 2021.
Experience the unique features of Skyjed:
- AI-powered modern product lifecycle management and governance solution
- Flexible to achieve different business goals
- Pre-built design, monitoring and review templates or easily build your own
- Automated workflow triggers so you can identify opportunities as they emerge or monitor risks before they take hold
- Access boardroom-ready product governance and product insight reports and dashboards
- Team collaboration with review and approval workflows, actions & comments management, version control and record keeping
- Integrated workspace with product planning and scheduler capability
Download our Product Monitoring & Reviews Playbook to learn more.