February 4, 2020, | AtoZ Markets – The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced on Monday that online trading company AxiCorp is seeking a review of ASIC’s decision to suspend its Australian financial services (AFS) license.
"While we respect ASIC's view, we have appealed the decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and will be contending that a suspension was not the correct decision. We strongly believe that the issues raised by ASIC are generally historical, in many cases self-reported and do not deserve a suspension, which is why we’ve appealed the decision," said AxiCorp.
Notably, AxiCorp operates under the business names AxiForex, AxiPrime, and AxiTrader. Moreover, the Australian based firm operates a business that offers margin forex. It also offers contracts for differences (CFDs) to retail and wholesale clients.
Administrative Appeals Tribunal grants AxiCorp a stay of the suspension
On January 2, 2020, ASIC suspended the AFS license of AxiCorp for four months. On the same day, however, the firm applied to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for review of ASIC’s suspension decision. AxiCorp also applied for a stay of the suspension decision and for confidentiality orders.
Moreover, the Tribunal has granted a stay of the suspension pending final review. This means that AxiCorp can still provide financial services until a final decision by the Tribunal is made. Nevertheless, the Tribunal denied AxiCorp’s request for confidentiality orders.
The firm, however, stressed:
"Until the process has concluded, our Australian clients are still able to trade as normal and we are still able to service new clients. Clients trading through other AxiCorp entities are unaffected by this decision and can also continue to trade as normal."
Why ASIC Suspended AxiCorp AFS Licence?
ASIC suspended AxiCorp’s AFS license after the regulator found that the company failed to comply with financial services laws, namely the requirements to:
- pay client money into an account with an Australian authorised deposit-taking institution
- lodge product disclosure statement (PDS) in-use notices with ASIC
- comply with the ASIC derivative transaction rules
- comply with client money reporting rules; and
- lodge financial statements with ASIC by the due date.
AxiCorp was found by ASIC to have breached Condition 3 of its license which requires AxiCorp to establish and maintain compliance measures that ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, that the licensee complies with the provisions of the financial services laws.
"AxiCorp entities also remain licenced by top tier regulators, including the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and we take our regulatory obligations in all countries extremely seriously," AxiCorp told AtoZ Markets.
Furthermore, according to ASIC, AxiCorp is likely to contravene its obligations under s912A of the Corporations Act. This is as a result of deficiencies and systemic failures in AxiCorp’s compliance regime.
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