Investmentscams cost Australians A$837.7 million in 2025, the country's largest singlecategory of scam loss, according to the National Anti-Scam Center. TheAustralian Securities and Investments Commission has opened a register oflegitimate licensee website addresses, inviting more than 6,500 firms to listthe sites consumers can trust.The moveflips the logic of the regulator's recent work, which leaned on stripping outfakes after they surfaced. ASIC removed 11,964 phishing and investment scamwebsites in 2025, a 90% increase on the prior year and roughly 32 sites a day.A new FMIntelligence analysis asks whether certifying the real sites can do what thosetakedowns have not, and pull the loss numbers down. Read it on the FM Intelligenceportal here.From Tearing Down Fakes toCertifying the Real OnesRather thanchasing clones once they appear, the regulator now wants to give the public areference point for what a licensed broker's genuine address looks like, ashift FM covered when ASIC first signaled the register.The cloneproblem already lands hard on brokers themselves. Pepperstone has said that taking down fake versions of itssite is close to afull-time job for its fraud team, with the firm buying up domain variants tostay ahead of impersonators.Three Conditions ThatDecide the PayoffTheanalysis finds the register's effect will hinge on three things. The first ishow many licensees sign up while participation stays voluntary. The second iswhether advertising platforms check submissions against the list. The third ishow ASIC handles authorized representatives, who operate under another firm's licenseand sit outside the register's scope.Each gappoints to the same risk, that a partial list leaves consumers more confusedrather than better protected. The regulator has already warned that scammerscloned its own Moneysmart consumer site, a reminder that even officialaddresses get copied.What the UK and Italy ShowOtherregulators have reached for adjacent tools with uneven results. In Britain, theFinancial Conduct Authority pairs a long-running register with a public WarningList, and in December 2025 it added a consumer verification tool called Firm Checker. Even so,about 800,000 people reported losing money to investment and pension scams overthe prior year, and UK Finance put investment-fraud losses at £144.4 million in2024.Italy wenta different way. Its market regulator Consob has held the power to orderinternet providers to block illegal financial sites since July 2019, and byApril 2026 it was still adding to a tally past 1,000 domains. Blocking cuts off access, whileAustralia's whitelist tries to certify trust at the other end.Singaporemoved the liability itself, with total scam losses easing only after banks andtelecommunications firms were made partly responsible for reimbursing victims.Australia's register asks brokers to opt in rather than placing duties on theplatforms that carry the ads, a distinction the analysis treats as central towhether losses fall.The full FMIntelligence analysis breaks down the 2025 loss profile by age, gender andstate, sets out base, bull and bear projections for 2026, and comparesAustralia's whitelist with domain blocking in Italy and register verificationin the UK.Readthe full analysis on the FM Intelligence portal: After 12,000 Takedowns, ASIC Turnsto a Whitelist of Australia's Licensed Broker SitesThis article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.