The move by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission comes as receivers McGrathNicol today took charge of a Banksia-linked mortgage fund, which collapsed owing investors nearly $10 million - just five days after Banksia went into receivership.

The ASIC taskforce will comprise business units from across the regulator and will be led out of Melbourne by commissioner John Price. It will make recommendations to Federal Treasury.

An ASIC spokesman said that it was time to increase the “regulatory intensity” on the shadow banking sector.

"Banksia is a significant financial collapse that affects the lives of many everyday Australians,” he said.

“ASIC wants to take a closer look as it is another area of retail-funded shadow banking. At the moment what's available to ASIC is conduct and disclosure but the chairman's position is that we need to lift the regulatory intensity to make sure that investors are confident and informed."

Last week McGrathNicol said investors in the failed Banksia Securities would get a "meaningful" amount of their $665 million tied up with the firm. Much of Banksia's investment customers were in regional Victoria.

The trustees of Banksia Securities called in receivers after an internal review found Banksia had to make a "material increase" in money set aside to cover mortgage defaults.

Banksia made more than 1000 loans, mostly to farmers, families and small companies in regional Victoria.

It emerged last week auditors gave Banksia Securities a clean bill of health less than four weeks before its collapse. Auditors Richmond Sinnott and Delahunty of Bendigo audited and signed off on Banksia's financial records since at least 2009.

Cherry Fund, an investment fund linked to Banksia, on Tuesday appointed receivers. Cherry invests in mortgage securities and owes about $10 million to investors. The secured creditor of Cherry Fund, The Trust Company Limited, appointed the receivers McGrathNicol after Cherry Fund conducted an urgent review of its forecast cash flows for the next 12 months.

The review found Cherry was unlikely to meet the anticipated level of redemption requests by investors during that period, as a consequence of the decision to appoint a receiver to Banksia last week.

“We are now reviewing Cherry Financial's business and mortgage portfolio which we are doing with the support of the executive team at The Banksia Financial Group,” said Tony McGrath, from McGrathNicol.

“We are also working with the executive team at The Banksia Financial Group to ensure that the group's remaining investment fund Banksia Mortgage Fund can continue to trade uninterrupted.”

After the global financial crisis, the government and ASIC introduced an “if not, why not” disclosure regime to encourage regular and quality disclosure of information after a number of retail investor organisations collapsed.

The current disclosure benchmark regime has been in place since then.