LicenseCompare

Australian Securities and Investments Commission

Australia corporate licensing requirements

Map the entity-level application: legal entity, permissions, ownership, governance, documents, capital/resources, controls, policies, and ongoing obligations.

Corporate requirements

  • - AFSL authorisation by service and financial product type
  • - Financial resources, compliance arrangements, dispute resolution, insurance, training, and risk management
  • - Responsible manager proofs and business description matched to requested authorisations
  • - Retail or wholesale client controls and disclosure arrangements

Application journey

  1. 1. Decide whether the business provides financial product advice, deals in financial products, makes a market, operates a scheme, provides custody, or another AFSL service.
  2. 2. Map the requested financial services and product authorisations to retail and wholesale client plans.
  3. 3. Prepare responsible manager evidence, business description, compliance arrangements, financial resources, insurance, dispute resolution, and proofs.
  4. 4. Apply or vary an AFSL through the ASIC Regulatory Portal.
  5. 5. Verify licence status, conditions, representatives, and advisers on ASIC professional registers and Moneysmart where applicable.

Documents and controls

  • - People and competence: Shows that named individuals can perform or supervise the regulated work.
  • - Ownership and controllers: Explains who owns, controls, funds, and benefits from the applicant.
  • - Governance and accountability: Allocates decision rights, oversight, senior responsibility, committees, and escalation.
  • - Capital and financial resources: Shows runway, prudential planning, and resource adequacy for the proposed permissions.
  • - AML/CFT and financial crime: Shows customer due diligence, sanctions, monitoring, suspicious activity, and escalation controls.
  • - Compliance framework: Turns rules into owned, scheduled, evidenced operating controls.
  • - Custody and client assets: Explains whether client assets are held, controlled, safeguarded, deducted from, or avoided.
  • - Outsourcing and vendors: Shows that outsourced work is selected, supervised, escalated, and replaceable.
  • - Cyber and technology controls: Shows platform resilience, access control, business continuity, incident response, and data protection.
  • - Complaints and conduct: Shows conduct risk ownership, customer handling, and escalation for complaints or disputes.
  • - Regulatory reporting: Shows that recurring reports, filings, amendments, attestations, and register changes are owned.
  • - Financial forecasts: Connects business plan, revenue assumptions, costs, capital, and runway to the applicant entity.
  • - Wind-down and exit planning: Shows how clients, assets, records, complaints, and obligations would be handled if the business stops.

Capital and timeline

Financial resource expectations depend on authorisations, financial products, client money/custody, and licensee obligations.

Timeline estimate: Often 4 to 8+ months depending on authorisations and proof quality.

Common bottlenecks

  • - Requested authorisations are broader than the actual operating plan can support
  • - Responsible manager evidence is thin or not matched to all authorisations
  • - Retail client disclosure, dispute resolution, and advice controls are incomplete
  • - The firm treats wholesale-only plans as low risk without documenting client classification and distribution controls