The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is building the infrastructure to supervise financial services firms through data rather than purely through examination - and the accuracy of what firms record on public registers is becoming a compliance risk in its own right. Two developments announced this week make that direction concrete: a refreshed companies search service as part of ASIC's long-term RegistryConnect program, and the results of a review into financial adviser qualifications compliance that found 132 adviser records requiring attention. Taken together, they reflect a regulator that is modernising the information it holds and then using that information more actively in supervision.
ASIC's business registers process more than 298 million searches and 3.3 million lodgements annually, according to the Australian government's Major Digital Projects Report 2026 - a scale that makes register accuracy a systemic matter rather than an administrative one. RegistryConnect is ASIC's long-term program to replace legacy registry infrastructure with updated digital services incorporating stronger authentication, improved identity verification, enhanced data validation and modernised platforms. The program is designed to improve data integrity while reducing the technology and cyber security risks associated with ageing systems.
The latest step is a public beta of a refreshed companies and organisations search service, replacing the previous free search interface while continuing to offer paid products through ASIC Connect. The updated service allows users to refine searches by organisation type, registration status and location, with company profiles reorganised to display Australian Company Numbers, Australian Business Numbers, review dates, registration status and historical company names. ASIC has also released a new suite of APIs for wholesale users including information brokers accessing registry data in high volumes.
ASIC described the register as something that "helps to underpin trust, transparency and confidence across the economy by enabling users to verify a company's identity and check its ownership" and said it "forms an important part of ASIC's regulatory, supervisory, and enforcement work."
The second development demonstrates what active use of register data looks like in practice. Following the financial adviser qualifications standard becoming mandatory on January 1, 2026 - after a series of warnings issued throughout 2025 urging licensees to verify records - ASIC examined the Financial Advisers Register and identified 132 relevant providers whose entries either contained no recognised qualifications or recorded only completion of the former FASEA exam.
ASIC 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 indicated it may conduct further reviews examining qualifications recorded on the register.
The review's significance is not the 132 figure in isolation but the mechanism behind it: ASIC identified the non-compliant records by examining what was recorded on the register, having stated before the deadline that it would rely on FAR information when assessing whether advisers remained authorised to provide personal advice. Inaccurate or incomplete records were not just an administrative problem - they were the compliance failure.
The FAR primarily applies to advisers providing personal advice on products including life insurance rather than those providing only general insurance advice - a distinction that limits the direct application of the qualifications review for parts of the insurance sector. But the broader implication extends across the market. Insurers, brokers, underwriting agencies and other financial services businesses use ASIC's company registers daily during customer onboarding, corporate verification, procurement, fraud investigations, counterparty due diligence and third-party risk assessments. As ASIC continues replacing legacy systems and expands its use of digital register information in supervision, the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of what firms record on public registers is likely to face increasing scrutiny - and internal governance processes supporting both corporate registry obligations and adviser record management will need to keep pace.
