Australia’s corporate watchdog Joe Longo will step down after a term in which the regulator has turned up the heat on the country’s superannuation giants over their treatment of customers, while also maintaining pressure on banks over consumer protection.

The chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), who turned 66 on Thursday, announced on Friday he would leave the watchdog when his current five-year term ends in May next year.

Longo will leave the watchdog after a period in which it has increased the number of new civil cases by a fifth, and taken on more investigations, while launching landmark cases against super fund giants including AustralianSuper and Cbus .

In those cases, ASIC took the super giants to court over their handling of death benefit cla

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