ASIC has imposed additional conditions on Macquarie Bank Limited’s Australian financial services licence after ASIC identified what it said were "significant compliance failures – some going undetected for many years and one for a decade".

ASIC said these control weaknesses ranged from poor change management practices at Macquarie, unclear roles and responsibilities, and an incomplete understanding by the bank of the processes and controls in its own futures dealing business and its over-the-counter derivatives trade reporting.

The regulator said it had uncovered "nine market conduct matters of concern" in the last 18 months – seven of these related to misreporting of more than 375,000 OTC derivative transactions, and two others related to the prevention and detection of suspicious trading activity in Macquarie's futures dealing business, and the withholding of orders on the ASX24 market.

Consequently, the extra licence conditions imposed on Macquarie require the bank to

•    prepare a remediation plan to address the failures in their futures dealing business and OTC derivatives trade reporting functions and their root causes•    appoint an independent expert to review and report on the adequacy of Macquarie’s remediation plan; and•    have the independent expert assess the operational effectiveness of Macquarie’s remediation activities to prevent, detect and respond to similar issues in future.

ASIC commissioner Simone Constant said, "We were particularly disappointed that Macquarie failed to prevent 11 suspicious orders being placed on the electricity futures market via Macquarie terminals shortly after ASIC had referred similar failures to the Markets Disciplinary Panel which fined the bank just under $5 million [in September 2024]."

ASIC acknowledged that Macquarie cooperated with ASIC throughout this process and consented to the imposition of the additional licence conditions.

In response, Macquarie Bank announced the extra licence conditions imposed by ASIC, and asserted that it "takes its role as a licensed entity extremely seriously, including the importance of ensuring the integrity of the markets in which it operates and learning from instances where compliance has been inadequate."

Macquarie added that ASIC has acknowledged the bank's cooperation throughout the process and its consent to the licence conditions.