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ASIC's AI Expectations for Australian Financial Services: Licence Obligations, RG 271, and the Enforcement Direction
ASIC has signalled clearly that AI governance failures in financial services will be treated as licence obligation failures. RG 271 (Internal Dispute Resolution), financial services licence conditions, and ASIC's enforcement history map a clear set of AI obligations for Australian financial services firms.
Key Takeaways
ASIC treats AI governance failures as potential breaches of financial services licence obligations — specifically the requirements to maintain competence, compliance resources, and appropriate risk management.
RG 271 (Internal Dispute Resolution) requires financial firms to have accessible, responsive dispute resolution that works for all customers — AI-generated decisions that customers cannot understand or effectively challenge create RG 271 compliance risk.
ASIC's responsible lending obligations apply to AI-driven credit decisions — the AI does not substitute for human credit assessment obligations, it creates additional documentation and explainability requirements.
ASIC has specifically addressed robo-advice: AI-generated financial advice must meet the same best interests duty obligations as human advice — the AI is not exempt from statutory obligations because it is an algorithm.
ASIC's enforcement approach in 2026: outcome-focused, consumer harm-led, willing to pursue individuals where governance failures are attributed to specific executives.
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ASIC's regulatory framework for AI in financial services
ASIC has not published a dedicated AI regulatory framework, but its position on AI governance is clear from the combination of its existing regulatory instruments, its published guidance, and its enforcement actions. ASIC's approach is that the obligations of financial services licensees — to act efficiently, honestly, and fairly; to maintain competence to provide the financial services authorised; and to have adequate risk management systems — apply to AI systems used in those services.
This means that a financial services licensee using AI in credit assessment, financial advice, insurance underwriting, or customer service cannot point to the AI as the decision-maker in a way that insulates the licensee from liability. The licensee is responsible for the AI's outputs as if they were the licensee's own decisions. The AI is a tool — a sophisticated tool, but a tool — and the licensee's obligations attach to the decisions made using that tool.
Robo-advice and the best interests duty
ASIC's regulatory guide on digital financial product advice (RG 255) makes clear that AI-generated financial advice must satisfy the same statutory obligations as human advice: the best interests duty, the appropriate advice obligation, and the requirement to warn of significant risks. An AI advice system that recommends a product because it optimises for a metric that does not reflect the customer's best interests is not compliant — the fact that an algorithm made the recommendation does not change the applicable standard.
The specific AI governance implications of this position are significant. The AI advice system must be designed with the best interests duty in mind — not just optimising for an objective function that happens to correlate with customer outcomes in testing, but demonstrably producing advice that reflects each customer's specific circumstances. The documentation of how the AI reaches its advice outputs must be sufficient for ASIC to assess compliance. And the firm must have a process for reviewing advice outputs for compliance, not just for accuracy.