CSLR levies land early as backlash over rollout erupts

This pool will be recovered through a structure that combines a minimum levy of $100, with an additional $37 charge for each credit representative tied to the licence.

Meanwhile, credit providers are projected to pay a combined $2.00 million across 987 entities, with securities dealers looking at a total bill of $6.48 million across 1,164 entities.

The most intense pressure sits in the personal financial advice space, with the figures putting the 2026–27 CSLR take from 2,851 advice entities at $126.85 million – more than double the revised $67 million estimate for the previous year.

However, the standard annual levy for any subsector is capped at $20 million – meaning only $20 million of that advice bill can be raised through the usual channel.

The remaining $106.85 million hangs on whether the minister signs off on a special levy to recover the balance.

The CSLR was created to deal with a specific gap – this being consumers who had won determinations through the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) but were left unpaid due to the fact that a firm had collapsed or could not meet the award.

Under the scheme, compensation of up to $150,000 can be paid to eligible claimants across the four subsectors.

Licensees receive ‘two invoices in the same financial year’

However, a shift in timing has blindsided some licence holders, including QED Group director Greg Ashe, who said he had initially assumed the CSLR would be billed on the same pattern as ASIC’s supervisory industry funding levy.

In that regime, he noted, bills arrived in January based on the number of credit representatives they had on their books at 30 June of the prior financial year.

Ashe said he was later told that CSLR levies were instead linked to the year “before last”, creating a two‑year gap between the metrics period and the levy period.

According to Ashe, ASIC also pointed out that, under the legislation, CSLR invoices were meant to be sent “in the 12 months prior to the financial year to which they pertain”.

He said this meant that the most recent round of invoices had been correctly issued and that the first two years of billing were the anomaly.

Ashe explained that licensees had been caught in a one‑off squeeze as ASIC moved from late to on‑time billing.

“How can they levy a fee for 2026–27 when we haven’t even got to the end of the 2025–26 year? How do they know how many credit reps to charge for when we haven’t even got to the point in the year when the Reps are counted up?” he questioned.

He said ASIC told him it regarded the earlier practice, whereby invoices went out in August and payable in October, as technically late.

With that change, Ashe said, firms had effectively been billed four months earlier than they were for the previous two periods and, for FY25–26, had received two CSLR invoices.

ASIC slammed for ‘lack of transparency’

Ashe stressed that he was not challenging the principle of CSLR funding and added that his frustration was directed at how the numbers were presented and how difficult it had been to obtain a clear explanation from the regulator.

“The problem is not the charge – as long as you assume ASIC’s numbers have been adequately audited by someone appropriate, the problem is the lack of transparency of the invoices,” he said.

He said making sense of the bill required him to hunt through documentation that was technically available but not clearly advertised.

“I had to find all that information myself – there was a link to it in the covering letter to the invoice – but you still need to know what you’re looking for,” Ashe noted.

Ashe was particularly scathing about the lack of upfront communication around the timing shift and one‑off double hit.

“The bigger problem is the total lack of transparency from ASIC about timing, how did they think it was okay to suddenly bring the invoices forward four months without explanation or warning?” he said.

“How did they think it was okay to charge licensees twice in the same financial year without batting an eyelid?”

He also raised concerns about the regulator’s frontline engagement model and said the main point of contact – a call centre – had struggled to answer questions about the invoices.

“More problematic is the inability of the ASIC call centre to explain the invoices. ASIC has become a completely closed shop with no outside-world contact permitted,” Ashe stated.

“ASIC hiding behind call centres, unacknowledged timeline changes and half-baked arithmetic, without adequate public-facing information, is unprofessional.”

[Related: Government puts forward 8 proposals to tackle CSLR funding crisis]