CFDs Drive ASIC's Record AU$830 Million Fine Haul

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has closed its 2025-26 financial year with AU$830 million in court-ordered civil penalties, the highest annual total in the regulator's history. A further AU$644 million was delivered back to Australians affected by misconduct over the same period, according to the regulator. A single case carries a large share of that total: a AU$300.2 million penalty against collapsed CFD issuer Union Standard International Group and its former authorised representatives EuropeFX and TradeFred, roughly 36% of the year's entire civil penalty figure. The full-year figure builds on numbers ASIC had already flagged mid-year. For the six months from July to December 2025, the regulator had reported AU$349.8 million in civil penalties and AU$583 million returned to consumers and investors, a total that was itself a six-month record at the time. That leaves roughly AU$480 million in penalties added in the second half of the financial year, from January to June 2026.

On 12 June 2026, the Federal Court ordered penalties totalling AU$300.2 million against collapsed contracts for difference issuer Union Standard International Group, trading historically as USGFX, and its former authorised representatives Maxi EFX Global, trading as EuropeFX, and BrightAU Capital, trading as TradeFred. The court split the penalty as AU$156.7 million against Union Standard, AU$114.1 million against EuropeFX, and AU$29.4 million against TradeFred. ASIC described it as the largest penalty it has secured in a single regulatory matter, surpassing the AU$250 million combined penalty against ANZ finalised in December 2025, which had itself been the previous record for a single entity. The Union Standard case alone accounts for close to 36% of ASIC's entire AU$830 million civil penalty total for the financial year, and for roughly 63% of the second-half total once the December 2025 numbers are subtracted out. The case centred on conduct between 2018 and 2020, when EuropeFX and TradeFred marketed and issued CFDs to customers, including in China, while deriving most of their revenue from those customers' trading losses. The Federal Court found the two entities profited from client losses in 95% to 99% of cases, with total customer losses exceeding AU$83 million. ASIC Chair Sarah Court said the penalties reflect the egregious nature of CFD issuer misconduct in this case. Union Standard entered voluntary administration in mid-2020 and had its Australian financial services licence cancelled that September. The Federal Court's orders were temporarily stayed until 13 July 2026.

The Union Standard case was not the only derivatives-related enforcement action to land in the 2025-26 financial year. In March 2026, the Federal Court ordered Oztures Trading, trading as Binance Australia Derivatives, to pay a AU$10 million penalty for misclassifying more than 85% of its Australian customer base and exposing 524 retail investors to high-risk crypto derivative products without required protections, resulting in more than AU$12 million in losses and fees. Counting that case alongside Union Standard puts CFD and derivatives-adjacent penalties at roughly AU$310 million for the year, or about 37% of the total civil penalty figure. 

The sector had already been under review before either case reached court. In January 2026, ASIC said it had secured the return of about AU$40 million to more than 38,000 retail investors following a review of 52 licensed CFD issuers, after finding more than half of them were either offering unauthorised margin discounts or breaching design and distribution or reporting obligations. ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said the review had helped put that money back in investors' pockets. The regulator reported that 39 issuers changed their target markets, 46 improved website content, 44 improved client onboarding questionnaires, 42 introduced new trade-monitoring processes, and 48 made changes to meet OTC derivative reporting requirements, while the number of reported situations lodged rose 127%. 

The regulator's data from that review showed 68% of retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year, with total losses exceeding AU$458 million, including AU$73 million in fees. ASIC's product intervention order restricting the sale of CFDs to retail investors, first introduced in 2021, is due to expire in May 2027 unless renewed; the regulator has said it will consult with industry on the order in 2026. The time of the Union Standard ruling that the court also imposed a permanent restraint on EuropeFX from operating a financial services business and ordered it to refund customers' net deposits, alongside an adverse publicity order.