ASIC Enforcement Priorities 2026 - What Financial Services Firms Must Prepare For
ASIC’s 2026 enforcement agenda sharpens its focus on resilience, misconduct and emerging market risks - firms that prepare early will avoid costly remediation and reputational damage.
What are ASIC’s 2026 enforcement priorities?
ASIC has been explicit that its enforcement posture is shifting from remediation-heavy activity to earlier, sharper intervention focused on systemic risk, governance weaknesses and poor operational resilience.
For 2026, ASIC’s priorities converge around three themes:
Operational and technological resilience
Private markets and complex financial products
Persistent conduct failures and governance breakdowns
For stockbrokers, advisers and market participants, these priorities directly affect licensing risk, supervisory intensity and enforcement exposure.
Priority 1: Operational and technological resilience
ASIC has elevated operational resilience as a core market integrity issue, particularly for:
Market operators and participants
Clearing and settlement participants
Stockbrokers and trading firms reliant on technology and third-party providers
ASIC expects firms to demonstrate:
Clear ownership of critical systems and services
Robust business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements
Effective incident detection, escalation and response
Strong oversight of technology vendors and outsourced providers
This aligns ASIC expectations with APRA’s CPS 230 framework, even where firms are not directly APRA-regulated.
Priority 2: Private markets, structured products and leverage
ASIC has flagged growing concern about private credit, structured products and less transparent markets, including:
Retail exposure to complex or illiquid assets
Weak disclosure and valuation practices
Inadequate distribution controls
Misalignment between product risk and target markets
For brokers and advisers, this raises the bar on:
Product governance and due diligence
Design and Distribution Obligations (DDO) monitoring
Suitability assessments and client communications
Surveillance of secondary trading and liquidity events
Private markets remain a strong growth area, but also a clear enforcement focus.
Priority 3: Persistent misconduct and governance failures
ASIC continues to target firms that repeatedly fail to address known issues, including:
Ongoing compliance breaches that are patched, not fixed
Poor breach reporting and investigation quality
Weak complaints handling and root-cause analysis
Board reporting that lacks insight or challenge
ASIC has made clear that repeat failures will attract escalated enforcement responses, including licence conditions, court action and public outcomes.
Why this matters for 2026 planning
ASIC’s enforcement approach increasingly tests whether firms can prove control, not just point to policies.
This means:
Better data and reporting quality
Stronger linkage between incidents, complaints, breaches and remediation
Board-level visibility of operational and conduct risks
Evidence that third-party and technology risks are actively managed
Firms that rely on fragmented systems or manual processes are most exposed as regulatory scrutiny increases.
Common gaps ASIC continues to identify
Across advice, broking and market participants, recurring weaknesses include:
Incident and breach data that is inconsistent or incomplete
Poor integration between risk, compliance, technology and operations
Limited testing of resilience scenarios and recovery capability
Weak documentation of decision-making and accountability
Over-reliance on vendors without effective assurance
These gaps often surface during ASIC reviews, thematic surveillance or post-incident engagement.
How OCG helps clients prepare for ASIC’s 2026 priorities
OCG supports financial services firms to translate enforcement priorities into practical uplift programmes.
1. Regulatory readiness assessments
Gap analysis against ASIC’s stated priorities
Mapping obligations across resilience, conduct and governance
Identification of high-risk exposure points
2. Resilience and operational risk uplift
Integration of ASIC resilience expectations with CPS 230-style frameworks
Critical service mapping and scenario testing
Incident and recovery playbooks
3. Product and market governance
Private market and structured product governance reviews
DDO and distribution control uplift
Surveillance and monitoring enhancements
4. Data, reporting and assurance
Board-ready MI and dashboards
Root-cause analysis frameworks
Independent testing and assurance to demonstrate control
FAQs
Are ASIC’s priorities legally binding?
While not law, ASIC’s stated enforcement priorities strongly influence surveillance, enforcement action and licence conditions.
Do these priorities apply only to large institutions?
No. ASIC has been clear that smaller brokers and advisers are equally expected to manage resilience, governance and conduct risks appropriately.
How do ASIC priorities interact with APRA requirements?
ASIC and APRA expectations increasingly overlap, particularly on operational resilience, third-party risk and data governance, raising the effective compliance baseline for many firms.
Strengthen Your 2026 Regulatory Readiness
Work with OCG’s Regulatory & Resilience Specialists
ASIC’s enforcement agenda is signalling where scrutiny will land next. OCG helps stockbrokers, advisers and financial services firms strengthen resilience, governance and data so they can meet 2026 expectations with confidence, and avoid reactive remediation.
