The corporate watchdog’s enforcement duties could be spun out into a new agency under a proposal from past chairman James Shipton, who says it is being asked to do too much with too little, making it difficult to succeed.

Mr Shipton, who led the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) between 2018 and 2021, said successive governments had heaped more and more responsibilities on the agency over the years without adding more resources, leaving it “chronically” underfunded.