Insider trading suspicions account for more than half of market inquiries by ASIC investigators, but the regulator has said there is no evidence to support claims the recent busted $7 million scam is the tip of an illegal iceberg.
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Increased guilty findings across the last five years are instead due to expertise and faster systems, ASIC commissioner Cathie Armour said.
The latest data showed insider trading fears were behind 53 of the 102 market inquiries ASIC's market and participant supervision team made in the six months to December. During that period seven people were convicted of, or had agreed to plead guilty to, insider trading.
While both figures were in line with numbers from the year before, ASIC has tracked down significantly more people misusing inside information since it established a markets enforcement team in 2009 and assumed responsibility for market supervision from the ASX a year later.
"I don’t think it is a reflection of there being necessarily more activity. I think it's more a reflection of our focus on insider trading, the expertise we have developed and the efficiencies being derived from combining the right staff and processes at ASIC," Ms Armour said.
"In appropriate cases, we can act on information within hours or days of the suspicious trading, whereas previously it could take months."
ASIC has prosecuted 34 insider trading matters since 2009, 23 successfully. Another individual who has pleaded guilty is awaiting sentencing and one is yet to enter a plea. While some appeals by individuals are pending, only five matters have been unsuccessful and one matter was discontinued. Prior to this time, less than one person on average was convicted for the offence each year.
The comments from ASIC came a week after charges were laid in the combined Australian Federal Police-ASIC sting into information leaked by a Canberra ABS employee, discovered after ASIC was tipped off by a broker who noticed unusually risky foreign exchange trades being entered into by the public servant's Melbourne friend, now sacked from the NAB.
ASIC was not spared the razor in Tuesday's budget, with its funding cut by $120 million across four years.
The savings mean 209 staff are set to be sacked in 2014-15 from a workforce of 1782. An additional 150 employees had reportedly taken voluntary redundancy packages before the budget.
ASIC introduced a real-time, algorithm-based survelliance system in October last year. But it is not used to monitor the foreign exchange market, which generally involves "over-the-counter" deals between a trader and an FX broker.
