Financial product comparison site Finder.com has been sued by Australia’s financial services regulator for allegedly offering a cryptocurrency yielding product without the required license.
On December 15, the Australian Securities and Exchange Commission (ASIC) started proceedings against Finder.com’s subsidiary, Finder Wallet, a locally registered digital currency exchange.
ASIC stated that the Finder Earn product is an unlicensed financial product and violates Finder Wallet’s product disclosure requirements. In addition, ASIC claimed that Finder failed to comply with obligations to properly distribute financial products.
Finder Earn offered users an annual return of between 4.01 percent and 6.01 percent for True AUD (TAUD), a stablecoin pegged to the Australian dollar.
ASIC claimed that this product was an unsecured loan that requires an Australian Financial Services (AFS) license.
ASIC also stated that investors who invest indirectly in a product that Finder Earn may not be suitable for face a potential risk. Finder, on the other hand, did not agree with ASIC’s assessment.
“We disagree with the view that Finder Earn can be considered unsecured debt securities,” a Finder spokesperson said in an interview with Cointelegraph.
“Since the launch of Finder Earn in 2021, we have stayed in touch with ASIC and complied with all requests from ASIC.”
A Finder.com spokesperson also claimed that the decision to discontinue the product due to rising interest rates was a strategic business decision and not due to regulatory scrutiny.
However, a spokesperson from both Finder and ASIC announced that all user funds have been fully refunded following the shutdown of Finder Earn.
When Finder was asked whether they would appeal the case, he explained that they would not comment as the matter was taken to court.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit filed by ASIC against Finder is the third it has filed in the past few months against crypto financial products and the companies that provide them.
Last November, ASIC similarly sued fintech firm Block Earner for offering three crypto-backed fixed income products without AFS licenses. In response to the lawsuit, Block Earner’s CEO counterattacked on the lack of financial regulatory framework in the country.
However, financial services company BPS Financial was also sued by ASIC last October for unlicensed behavior related to its Qoin token.
Finally, ASIC President Joe Longo had previously warned that he would initiate transactions on digital asset investment products that contain high risk.