The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) aims to raise its penalties in line with other regulators, a parliamentary committee has heard.

The maximum it can levy against an individual is $200,000, compared with $500,000 for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

ASIC Chairman Greg Medcraft was asked by committee member Sam Dastyari if the ACCC figure is what the regulator wants.

“It is a matter for government, but clearly it should be enough to be a disincentive for the wrong behaviours,” he told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services.

“Also, if you compare us to overseas jurisdiction, you see that in some jurisdictions the penalty amount is unlimited.”

ASIC’s maximum penalty for a company is $1 million, compared with $10 million for the ACCC.

“So at the moment their penalties are greater by a factor of 2.5 for an individual and 10 for a company?” Senator Dastyari asked.

“Correct,” Mr Medcraft replied. “And even within our own law, the Australian financial services licence penalties were set 20 years ago at a maximum of $34,000.

“Credit licences, more recently established, are at $340,000 – 10 times larger. So the message here is that probably the law needs to make sure penalties are kept up to date and that they are consistent.”

In real terms, the financial services penalties are worth about half what they were 20 years ago, Mr Medcraft says. “So having a unit system, where it is automatically indexed for inflation, is quite important.”