Compliance · Finance, advisers, accountants
Tax Practitioners Board obligations, ASIC cyber-resilience expectations, AFSL data handling, AML reporting from 2026. Financial-services compliance pressures stack. The firms who handle them without heroics have the right IT discipline in place before the regulator asks.
Live right now · finance, advisers, accountants
Active regulatory pressures we're already working through with clients in your sector. Each card links to the detailed guide.
Captures accounting practices providing designated services (corporate appointments, nominee, company and trust formation, client-money handling). AML/CTF programme due 30 June 2026, enrolment closes 29 July 2026.
Read the full guideWhat's being asked of you · finance, advisers, accountants
Financial-services compliance pressures in Australia stack rather than substitute. An accountant providing designated services becomes an AUSTRAC reporting entity from 1 July 2026. An AFSL-authorised adviser carries ASIC's cyber-resilience expectations baked into licensing obligations and the FAR and RG 271 regimes around complaints data and adviser communications. A registered tax agent inherits Tax Practitioners Board record-keeping obligations on top of ongoing Privacy Act work. A practice operating across several authorisations quickly accumulates a compliance burden that outstrips the available staff to carry it.
The auditing and evidence expectation is consistent across regulators. ASIC, AUSTRAC, the TPB, and APRA-regulated parent organisations all expect the firm to show how a control is implemented, when it was last tested, who has access to what data, and what happened the last time something went wrong. The interpretation of the frameworks differs; the IT machinery that evidences them does not.
Cyber insurance and corporate client questionnaires sit alongside the regulatory load. Many finance practices we onboard arrive with three or four separate questionnaires (renewing PI cover, a major corporate client's supplier-assurance program, a referral partner's vendor onboarding) that ask broadly the same questions in different formats. A single well-evidenced control environment answers all of them; ten separate manual responses do not.
What we do · compliance practice
What we do for a finance practice varies with the authorisations the firm holds. An AFSL-authorised adviser has ASIC's cyber-resilience expectations baked into their licensing obligations. A registered tax agent has Tax Practitioners Board record-keeping and client-data obligations. An accountant providing designated services (trust account, payroll, company formation) becomes an AUSTRAC reporting entity from 1 July 2026. Different obligations, overlapping technical controls. We map the overlap so a single well-designed stack covers the full obligation surface without ten separate implementations.
The practical work sits around client-data handling. Where client files live, who can access them, what happens when a staff member leaves, how the firm would prove to an auditor that an unauthorised access never happened. Most mid-size practices we onboard have good intentions on all of this and uneven evidence. We close the evidence gap with identity controls, logging, retention policy and document-management configuration, then keep the record current month by month.
Across the engagement, the cycle is continuous rather than event-driven. Gap analysis against the authorisations the firm holds, monitoring of the controls in operation, remediation when something drifts, evidence pipelines that produce on demand. The discipline that lets a finance practice walk into an ASIC review or a Big 4 vendor questionnaire confident rather than scrambling.
We do not provide financial-services advice or compliance sign-off. The CA ANZ, CPA Australia, FASEA, AFCA and similar interpretations remain the responsibility of the firm's principals and its compliance officer. We build the systems those interpretations rely on to be honest.
The tools and the role · what we bring
Compliance frameworks have converged on roughly the same set of operational expectations. These are the five we run as a service so the framework cycle is a continuing operation rather than an annual scramble.
Log aggregation across your devices, identity, network and cloud services with the alerting that surfaces something unusual while it is still recoverable. The answer to 'are we under attack right now' rather than 'were we under attack last quarter'.
Allowlisting that prevents unauthorised executables from running on managed devices. One of the highest-impact Essential Eight controls and one of the hardest for in-house IT to operate without breaking the business. We run it as a service, including the day-to-day exception handling.
Most providers run a scanner and email you a list. We run the scanner and do the labour-intensive remediation work that actually closes the vulnerabilities inside the thirty-day window most frameworks expect. Scanning without remediation is a list of known problems with no closure.
Annual training your staff actually complete, phishing simulations that escalate rather than scold, and the completion reporting your compliance officer can show to an auditor or insurer. The training is a compliance artefact and a real behaviour-change tool, not a tick-box.
Strategic IT advice, framework gap analysis, board-level reporting, risk register maintenance, vendor management oversight. The compliance-aligned strategic role most firms our size cannot resource internally. See /services/vcio/ for the standalone offering.
More on the vCIO offeringThe risk that matters · for finance, advisers, accountants
The risk that matters most in financial services is not the misanswered question that costs you a tender. It is the answered-yes-to-something-you-should-not-have on an ASIC, APRA, or insurer questionnaire. When a breach happens or an audit lands, the evidence trail you cannot produce becomes the evidence the regulator weighs against you. We have watched mid-sized finance firms lose insurer cover and corporate clients over claimed controls that could not be substantiated. That outcome is preventable, and the prevention is mostly process discipline rather than additional spend.
Where it fits · managed IT engagement
The Client Security Baseline covers the baseline financial-services controls (MFA, application control, backups, offboarding, vulnerability management) for every CCP client. Where a practice is captured by a specific additional regime (AUSTRAC enrolment, ASIC market-participant obligations, an APRA-regulated parent), we layer the extra controls on per engagement.
Compliance obligations are not a plan tier; they are an overlay. The Managed IT + Compliance plan exists for firms that need the continuing overlay with evidence generation and reporting as an ongoing service. Practices with simpler obligation surfaces can run the baseline plan and add specific overlays only where regulator or client pressure makes them necessary.
What we do not do: financial-services regulatory interpretation, formal compliance sign-off, the work that a Responsible Manager or compliance officer owns under your AFSL or registration. We provide the IT and compliance expertise externally that most finance practices cannot resource internally, alongside the people who own the regulatory substance.
Common questions · finance, advisers, accountants
Can you help us prepare for an APRA CPS 234 assessment?
Do you handle AUSTRAC reporting-entity enrolment for accountants from July 2026?
What about ASIC RG 271 and FAR impact on adviser systems?
Can you help with ASIC's cyber-resilience expectations on AFSLs?
How does this fit with our Tax Practitioners Board obligations?
Will this satisfy a Big 4 vendor due-diligence questionnaire?
What evidence will we have for our compliance officer?
Next step · start with the evidence
The Essential Eight self-assessment takes about ten minutes and gives you a branded PDF report you can hand to your compliance officer, your insurer, or your board the same day. If you want to confirm we're the right shop for the work, the fit check comes next.
