Treasury has unveiled two dozen financial services legislation reforms, a year after Commissioner Kenneth Hayne published his final report and scores of recommendations for improvement.

A number of the measures unveiled by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg today relate to insurance. He says they enhance protections for consumers and small businesses and strengthen the role of financial regulators.

Feedback on the draft legislation will be accepted until February 28, with the bill to be introduced into Parliament by the middle of the year.

The reforms prohibit hawking of insurance products, establish an industry-wide deferred sales model for the sale of add-on insurance products, and give the regulator the power to impose a cap on commissions for add-on insurance products and insurance-like products.

Conditions on life insurers are intended to avoid misrepresentations and non-disclosure.

The reforms also restrict use of the term ‘insurer’ and ‘insurance,’ establish a compulsory scheme for checking references for prospective financial advisers and require Australian financial services licensees to investigate misconduct by advisers and remediate clients affected.

There is a recommendation to enable industry codes of practice to be made legally enforceable and subject to civil penalties if breached. The legislation will also require entities authorised to provide personal advice to a retail client to disclose in writing to the client where they are not independent and why.

The Government has committed to action on all 76 royal commission recommendations. Of these, 54 were directed to the Government, 12 to the regulators and 10 to the industry.

Click here to see the draft legislation.