Finally, a corporate regulator with an appetite for justice.

After 20 years in the wilderness, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC) rehabilitation as a law enforcement agency seems almost complete.

It follows a four-year overhaul from the top down that has transformed the regulator from its status as missing in action on anything to do with white-collar crime to an active investigative and prosecutorial unit.

ASIC was often incorrectly labelled as toothless during this decades-long hiatus in law enforcement. That is an erroneous description. It had teeth. It simply chose not to use them.

That has now shifted 180 degrees.

As the year draws to a close, ASIC has helped retrieve cash for investors caught up in the collapse of two failed superannuation funds, taken on several of the Big Four banks and strongarmed the Australian Securities Exchange into fixing its outdated systems.

Rather than simply be reactive, it has also tried to identify shifts in markets and how changing trends might impact the economy down the track. In particular, it has examined how best to keep watch over the expanding role of private debt, which largely falls outside regulations governing banks.

It has been a remarkable turnaround for an organisation that, for years, concentrated on pursuing individuals who lacked the resources to fight back or boasting its credentials on teaching financial literacy in schools.

A brief history of incompetence

Born in 1991 in the shadow of the "Decade of Greed" as the Australian Securities Commission (ASC), it was established to restore the community's faith in the Australian legal system.

With a stock market still shattered from the 1987 crash, the economy in the grip of a deep recession, and our former corporate leaders either broke, in jail or on the run, the ASC promised a new broom.

It took on high-profile court cases against figures like Rodney Adler and John Elliott and beefed up its investigatory prowess, later expanded with a new title, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

But within a decade, it all went wrong. After losing a couple of cases, it backed away from criminal action, preferring instead the lower legal hurdles involved in civil cases.

Then came the embarrassing case against the collapsed One.Tel and its directors. After almost a decade, it lost the case and copped an almighty spray from the judge over its incompetence.

And that was pretty much it. From then on, it overwhelmingly relied upon backroom deals with corporates, employing "enforceable undertakings" — promises to never repeat the offence — that were never enforced.

By the time the global financial crisis rolled around, ASIC was nowhere to be seen.

Amidst all the money torched during that tumultuous period, there were clear signs of wrongdoing.