Notifying ASIC of the change of control of the licensee
If you become aware of a "change in control" of your
financial services licensee, it is a condition of your AFSL that
you must, within 10 business days, lodge with ASIC, in prescribed
form, particulars of the change that has occurred. The Form FS20 is
the prescribed form for notifying ASIC of these changes.
ASIC requires this new information to monitor and ensure that
any new management of a company is still compliant with its
licensing requirements. Subsequently, any entity that is unable to
comply with its licensing obligations after a change in control,
incurs the risk of having its licence suspended or cancelled.
In our experience, ASIC tends to focus on changes in direct
shareholdings of licensees when raising change of control issues.
This is because ASIC keeps records of company shareholdings, and it
is easy for ASIC to show that the AFSL holder should have been
aware of the change.
