The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is placing greater emphasis on the accuracy of regulatory data as it modernises Australia’s business registers and increases its use of digital information to supervise financial services firms.
The regulator has launched a refreshed companies search service and separately released the results of a review into compliance with the financial adviser qualifications standard. While the announcements relate to different regulatory functions, they reflect ASIC’s broader strategy of improving the quality of information held on public registers that businesses, regulators, and consumers rely on.
For insurers, brokers, and other Australian Financial Services (AFS) licensees, the developments extend beyond technology upgrades. Accurate registry and adviser data support licensing, governance, due diligence, adviser supervision, third-party risk management, and regulatory reporting, while also providing ASIC with information used in compliance monitoring.
ASIC has introduced a public beta version of its companies and organisations search service, replacing the previous interface for free searches while continuing to offer paid search products through ASIC Connect. The updated service allows users to refine searches by organisation type, registration status, and location. Company profiles have also been reorganised to display information including Australian Company Numbers (ACNs), Australian Business Numbers (ABNs), review dates, registration status, and historical company names.
ASIC has also released a new suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) for wholesale users, including information brokers that access registry data in high volumes. “Companies and organisations register search is a key digital service for ASIC which helps to underpin trust, transparency and confidence across the economy by enabling users to verify a company’s identity and check its ownership. It is relied on daily by businesses and members of the public and forms an important part of ASIC’s regulatory, supervisory, and enforcement work,” ASIC said.
The search service forms part of RegistryConnect, ASIC’s long-term program to replace legacy registry infrastructure with updated digital services that include stronger authentication, improved identity verification, enhanced data validation, and modernised registry platforms. According to the Australian government’s Major Digital Projects Report 2026, ASIC’s business registers process more than 298 million searches and 3.3 million lodgements annually. The report states that RegistryConnect is intended to improve data integrity while reducing technology and cyber security risks associated with ageing systems.
ASIC also reported the outcome of a review into compliance with the financial adviser qualifications standard, which became mandatory on Jan. 1, 2026. The regulator examined records on the Financial Advisers Register (FAR) after identifying advisers whose entries either contained no recognised qualifications or approved training courses or recorded only completion of the former Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) exam.
ASIC identified 132 relevant providers whose records required review and contacted 82 AFS licensees responsible for those advisers. Following the review, 106 adviser records were updated to confirm compliance with the qualifications standard, while 26 relevant providers had ceased providing personal advice after their authorisations ended. ASIC also indicated it may conduct further reviews examining qualifications recorded on the register.
The review follows a series of ASIC warnings issued throughout 2025 as the Jan. 1, 2026, deadline approached. During that period, the regulator repeatedly urged licensees to verify qualification records and advised that, after the deadline, it would rely on information recorded on the FAR when assessing whether advisers remained authorised to provide personal advice. Before the qualifications deadline, ASIC reported there were 15,610 relevant providers on the register and warned that incomplete or inaccurate records could affect advisers’ ability to continue practising if they did not demonstrate compliance with the education standard.
Read next: ASIC’s paper form era is nearly over
Although the FAR primarily applies to advisers providing personal advice on products including life insurance, rather than advisers providing only general insurance advice, the review reinforces ASIC’s expectation that AFS licensees maintain accurate regulatory records. For insurers operating financial advice businesses, maintaining current adviser information forms part of governance and compliance obligations. More broadly, insurers, brokers, underwriting agencies, and other financial services businesses rely on ASIC’s company registers during customer onboarding, corporate verification, procurement, fraud investigations, counterparty due diligence, and third-party risk assessments.
Taken together, the registry upgrade and adviser compliance review point to a broader regulatory direction. As ASIC continues replacing legacy systems and expands its use of digital register information in supervision, firms are likely to face greater scrutiny of the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of information recorded on public registers. That places increasing importance on internal governance processes supporting both corporate registry obligations and adviser record management.
