Matthew Ellis

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Connect: Read more about Matthew Ellis
Firm/Organization: Norton Rose Fulbright
Blogs: Financial services: Regulation tomorrow, Health Law Pulse, Insurance law tomorrow

Latest Articles

Welcome to the 6th and final instalment of our weekly updates following the Hayne Royal Commission into the financial services industry. This week we focus on Recommendation 4.12, in which Hayne recommends that the Banking Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) be extended to other financial service providers, including insurers. Now that the full contents of the report have been laid bare, we can investigate what extending the BEAR beyond its native banking habitat (that’s the last…
Welcome to Part 5 of Insurance After Hayne, a six part series on our Insurance Law Tomorrow blog focusing on the implications for insurers following the release of the final report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services industry. In this week’s article, we explore Commissioner Hayne’s recommendations on claims handling, industry codes and cooperation with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), which replaced the Financial Ombudsman Service on…
Welcome to Part 4 of Insurance After Hayne, a six part series on our Insurance Law Tomorrow blog focusing on the implications for insurers following the release of the final report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services industry. In this week’s article, we explore Commissioner Hayne’s recommendations on governance, culture and remuneration, and particular his focus on the people in control: “There can be no doubt that the…
Welcome to Part 3 of Insurance After Hayne, a six part series on our Insurance Law Tomorrow blog focusing on the implications for insurers following the release of the final report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. This week, we shift our focus to one of the less-anticipated areas of reform: an insured’s duty of disclosure. Hayne’s report proposes changes to two provisions of the Insurance Contracts…
Welcome to Part 2 of Insurance After Hayne, a series focusing on the implications for general and life insurers of the Royal Commission’s final report.  In last week’s article, we provided an overview of the recommendations applicable to the insurance industry. This week, we look more closely at the recommendations regarding sales practices and policy terms. 1. No hawking of Insurance The Commissioner has recommended that hawking of insurance products to retail clients should…
Welcome to Part 1 of “Insurance after Hayne”, a special series on our Insurance Law Tomorrow blog focusing on the implications for general and life insurers following the release of the Royal Commission’s final report. Each week, we will be sharing our thoughts on Commissioner Hayne’s recommendations through the lens of our insurance regulatory team. To make sure you receive the latest updates in our series, subscribe to our blog on the right hand side.…
The Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) report ‘Integrity, Fairness and Efficiency—An Inquiry into Class Action Proceedings and Third-Party Litigation Funders’[1], was released on 25 January 2019. The report makes 24 recommendations in an effort to ‘shake up’ a now-booming sector.  The ALRC received over 75 submissions in response to their initial Discussion Paper[2], including a submission by Norton Rose Fulbright partners, Nicole Wearne, Matthew Ellis and Andrew Riordan, drawing on their…
It has become common knowledge that password protection and encryption of data are some of the most effective ways of preventing your information from ending up in the wrong hands. As cybercriminals adapt to advances in password protection and encryption technology, it is important to remember that these measures cannot completely eliminate the risk of data loss and data theft. Sometimes, malicious actors are able to access personal information by hacking into an organisation’s network…
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recently released its third quarterly report in relation to data breaches notified under the Notifiable Data Breach (NDB) Scheme between 1 July and 30 September 2018. For this quarter, the OAIC received 245 data breach notifications which is on par with the previous quarter. With this being the second full quarter report released by the OAIC, it is becoming easier to recognise certain trends in data breach…
clouds
In mid-2017, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that almost a third of sampled businesses are using commercial cloud computing services.  This year, Gartner reported Australian businesses will spend $4.6 billion on cloud services (an 18.5% increase from last year). Below we highlight some of the risks for businesses associated with the use of cloud services and provide tips to mitigate some of those risks. Vendor lock-in Some cloud service providers can make it difficult…