The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has issued a notice seeking to clarify financial advisers' record keeping obligations by amending Class Order 14/923 ‘Record-keeping obligations for Australian financial services licensees [AFSLs] when giving personal advice'.

The amendments state that AFSLs must have access to records for the period of time required to keep the records, even if a person other than the licensee stored the records.

It also makes explicit that authorised representatives who are advisers must keep records, and give the records to their authorising licensee if the licensee requests the records for the purposes of complying with financial services law, the statement said.

While the amendments to licensee obligations clarified rather than amend obligations, ASIC said it would still take a facilitative compliance approach for the first six months to ensure advice licensees had access to records as it recognised some licensees would need to change their systems to comply with the class order. This facilitative period will end on 26 April 2017.

"Our facilitative compliance approach applies where advice licensees make a good-faith attempt to comply with the obligation but are unable to do so because of, for example, the need to make systems changes," ASIC said.

Deputy chairman, Peter Kell, said advice licensees were responsible for the advice given by their authorised representatives and should have the means to monitor them.

"Consumers should have trust and confidence that advice licensees have access to their representatives' records so they can monitor the advice given by their representatives and remediate consumers if something goes wrong," Kell said.