The Gadens Breach Manager is a web-based tool that helps financial services organisations across Australia navigate highly complex regulatory regimes, including mandatory breach reporting that was introduced in October 2021.

The law firm said the new release was in response to research report in published in April, entitled State of Financial Services Breach Reporting in Australia, which found that breach reporting was taking its toll on the financial services sector.

The recent research commissioned by Lawcadia and Gadens highlighted that legal, risk, and compliance teams were struggling with the ambiguity and complexity of the different regulatory requirements.

It was noted that managing potential breach issues associated with ‘misleading and deceptive conduct’ was prevalent, and that identifying applicable exemptions and significance tests was frustrating and time consuming.

Gadens partner Liam Hennessy said that the industry was maturing in its experience and understanding of the financial services breach reporting regime, and that, along with insights from the recent research study, was a key driver for delivering a step-change in the RegTech tool.

“The upgraded Gadens Breach Manager is even more robust and visually signposted to help legal, risk, and compliance teams easily navigate expanded core obligations, exemptions, and significance tests. It also clearly incorporates the four arms of significance: material loss and damages, misleading and deceptive conduct, civil and criminal penalties, and otherwise significance tests,” said Mr Hennessy.

“The Gadens Breach Manager tool includes all the legislation and instruments that a user may need — everything is built-in.”

Mr Hennessy said users won’t have to switch between different pieces of legislation or separately look up significance tests.

"This will reduce the complexity and time required to investigate and report potential breaches,” he said.

Lawcadia co-founder Sacha Kirk said she was excited to work with Gadens on the significant revamp of the tool.

“We are passionate about developing solutions that are founded in industry research, experience and client insights,” she said.