Published by Curium Academy | In partnership with Clyde & Co
Most insurance professionals have heard the words “conflicted remuneration” and “conflict of interest” more times than they can count. But when Curium Academy and Clyde & Co asked a live audience of insurance professionals at the start of a webinar in April 2026 how confident they were that their current compliance frameworks were actually fit for purpose, only 6% said “very confident.” More than half said “somewhat confident.” About a third weren’t sure at all.
By the end of the session, the numbers had shifted — and not upward.
That is not a scare tactic. It is an honest reflection of where the industry sits right now. Two significant things happened in 2025 that changed the compliance landscape for every insurer, broker, underwriting agency, and supplier operating in Australia — and a lot of the detail has not fully landed yet.
This article is our attempt to fix that. It covers both changes, in plain English, with real examples, so you know what the rules actually mean for your business.
What Changed and Why It Matters Now
Two things happened that you need to know about.
1. The conflicted remuneration provisions in the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) were amended with effect from 9 July 2025. These amendments introduced informed consent requirements where personal advice is given to retail clients before commissions for insurance products can be paid, and placed more conditions upon the exemptions that the insurance industry has long relied on to stay outside the conflicted remuneration ban. The assumption that insurance is broadly exempt is no longer safe.
2. In late December 2025 — right before Christmas, when most of the industry had mentally clocked off — ASIC released an updated version of Regulatory Guide 181, its guidance on managing conflicts of interest. It was the first update since 2004. The obligation itself did not change. The way ASIC expects you to meet it did, significantly.
Part One: Conflicted Remuneration — What It Is and Whether It Applies to You
The basic rule
The prohibition on conflicted remuneration has been in Australia’s Corporations Act since 2012. At its core, it prohibits AFS licensees and their representatives from accepting any benefit — monetary or non-monetary — that could reasonably be expected to influence the financial product advice they give to retail clients.
The key word is “reasonably.” It is an objective test. You do not have to prove that a benefit actually changed someone’s advice. If a reasonable person would look at the benefit and think it could influence advice, it is captured.
The prohibition runs in both directions. It is not just about who receives a benefit — it is also about who gives one. Product issuers and sellers cannot give conflicted remuneration to a licensee or their representatives. Employers cannot give it to their staff who are licensees or representatives. And licensees have an additional obligation to take reasonable steps to make sure that their own representatives do not accept any conflicted remuneration.
So why is the insurance industry paying attention now if this has been around since 2012?
Because most insurance products have been exempted from the prohibition for most of that time. The 2024 legislative reform changed that. The exemptions still exist — but they are now more conditional and depend on whether the client gave informed consent.
What counts as a benefit?
This is broader than most people realise.
Monetary benefits include commissions paid by a product issuer to a licensee, volume-based payments from a platform operator, and fee discounts tied to funds held in related-party products.
Non-monetary benefits — and this is where many businesses underestimate their exposure — include free or subsidised business equipment (computers, software, hardware), hospitality like event tickets or subsidised travel, shares or interests in a product issuer, and marketing assistance.
Salaries and ordinary business expenses are not captured. But that sporting event hospitality your insurer partner organises? Worth a closer look.
Some benefits are specifically excluded: anything authorised or given by the client (including commissions paid out of a client’s premium, or fee-for-service arrangements), non-monetary benefits worth less than $300 (as long as they are not given regularly and records are kept for anything between $100 and $300), genuine training or education benefits relevant to the financial services business, and IT software or support provided for advice to retail clients.
The special rule for life risk insurance products
There is an additional definition of conflicted remuneration that applies specifically to life risk insurance products, and it catches more conduct than the general definition.
For life risk products, a benefit is conflicted remuneration if it is provided in response to giving information to a retail client about the product, or dealing in the product with a retail client — and the access to or amount of that benefit depends on the value or number of products acquired or varied.
What makes this different is that it does not require advice to be given. Just giving information or processing a deal can trigger it, if the benefit is tied to volume or value. This is a significant gap that insurers and intermediaries operating in the life risk space need to be aware of.
How the exemptions work by product type
Here is where it gets product-specific. Whether a particular commission or benefit is exempt from the ban depends on which type of insurance product it relates to, what type of advice was given, and whether the client’s informed consent was obtained.
For general insurance products: Non-monetary benefits are exempt. Monetary benefits for general advice are exempt. Monetary benefits for personal advice are exempt — but only if the client gave informed consent before the commission was received. No consent, no exemption.
For life risk insurance products (non-superannuation): Monetary benefits for general advice are exempt if the benefit is a level commission, or if it complies with ASIC’s benefit ratio and clawback requirements (which set caps on upfront and trailing commissions and require repayment of a portion of the commission if the policy is cancelled or reduced within two years). For personal advice, the same conditions apply plus informed consent is required. Non-monetary benefits are not exempt, unless another exemption for non-monetary benefits applies e.g. small value benefit etc. And the additional section 963AA prohibition applies to volume- or value-dependent benefits given in connection with information or dealings.
For consumer credit insurance: Monetary benefits for general advice are exempt. Monetary benefits for personal advice require informed consent before the commission is received. Non-monetary benefits are not exempt, unless another exemption for non-monetary benefits applies e.g. small value benefit etc.
The informed consent rule in plain English
This is the piece that drove the most industry discussion in 2025, and it is worth stating simply.
If you are a broker or financial adviser giving personal advice to a retail client, and you receive a commission, and you did not get the client’s informed consent to that commission before it was received — that commission is conflicted remuneration. The exemption does not apply. You are in breach.
If you did get the client’s informed consent before the commission was received, you are outside the ban. That is the key threshold.
The thing to understand about “informed consent” is that it is specific. A generic line in an FSG about receiving commissions is not it. The consent needs to relate to the specific commission for the specific product being recommended, and it needs to be obtained before the commission is received — not afterward, not at renewal if it was not done originally.
What if you are a product issuer, not an adviser?
Product issuers are caught on the giving side of the prohibition. You cannot provide benefits — commissions, incentive structures, hospitality, marketing support — that would constitute conflicted remuneration to the licensees and representatives you work with. Your distribution arrangements and commission structures need to be reviewed through this lens, not just from the perspective of the people receiving the benefits. Whilst product issuers are not deemed to have given conflicted remuneration if they provide commission to an adviser who has failed to meet the informed consent requirements, ASIC recommends product issuers obtain a copy of the informed consent from the advisor prior to payment as a risk management strategy
For life risk products specifically, as a product issuer you need to consider whether any benefits you are providing in connection with information given or dealings made are tied to the volume or value of products sold — because if they are, and they are volume- or value-dependent, they may be caught by the section 963AA definition even where no advice is given.
The enforcement reality
ASIC is active in this space. In late 2025, the Federal Court ordered RM Capital — a licensee — to pay a $575,000 penalty and its authorised representative, the SMSF Club, to pay $350,000, in relation to conflicted remuneration breaches involving referral fees from a real estate agent. The breaches occurred between 2013 and 2016. They were not ancient history by the time proceedings were brought, and they resulted in substantial consequences.
The message from ASIC is consistent: the insurance exemption is not a free pass, non-monetary benefits matter, and evidence of compliance matters just as much as compliance itself.
Part Two: Conflicts of Interest — The Broader Obligation That Applies to Everyone
Here is the thing that often gets lost in the conversation about conflicted remuneration: the conflicted remuneration rules are product-specific and advice-type-specific. A lot of businesses focus on those rules, satisfy themselves they are compliant or exempt, and move on.
But there is a separate, broader obligation that applies to every AFS licensee regardless of what products they deal in or how they distribute them. And ASIC has just substantially raised the bar for what compliance with that obligation looks like.
What the obligation is
Section 912A(1)(aa) of the Corporations Act requires every AFS licensee to have in place adequate arrangements for managing conflicts of interest that arise in relation to activities undertaken in the provision of financial services.
A conflict of interest is when competing interests — financial, personal, business, or related to another party, whether direct or indirect — arise in a situation and have the potential to interfere with fair, objective decision-making.
The obligation is not to eliminate all conflicts. That is the ideal. The obligation is to adequately and effectively manage them.
And this applies across the board. It does not matter what products you deal in, what your distribution model is, or whether the specific conflict is also covered by the conflicted remuneration rules. If you are an AFS licensee, this obligation applies to you and your representatives.
Why ASIC updated the guidance now
ASIC updated RG 181 — its guide on managing conflicts of interest — for the first time since 2004. In doing so, it described conflicts of interest as representing a significant source of misconduct and a cause of consumer, investor, and economic harm across the financial services sector.
The obligation itself did not change. What changed is how ASIC expects you to meet it. The updated guidance represents what Mikaela Eldridge of Clyde & Co described during the webinar as a fundamental shift in how businesses need to prepare and implement their conflict management frameworks.
The four steps every licensee needs to have in place
Courts and ASIC have consistently said that adequate arrangements require four things. You need to proactively identify conflicts, assess them, respond to them appropriately, and then monitor and review your response on an ongoing basis.
Step 1: Identify. This means identifying both actual conflicts — ones that exist right now — and potential conflicts — ones that do not exist yet but could reasonably be expected to arise. The test is objective. A useful way to think about it: would a reasonable person look at this situation and see a conflict? In Australia, the shorthand for this is the pub test. If it would raise eyebrows at the pub, it is probably a conflict that needs to be identified and managed.
ASIC has identified seven categories of conflict that licensees should at minimum consider: conflicts with clients, conflicts between different clients, structural conflicts within the business or corporate group, conflicts over a client’s proprietary information, conflicts of duty (director’s duties, fiduciary obligations, professional duties), conflicts arising from third-party commercial relationships, and individual conflicts — where an individual’s personal interests compete with their professional obligations.
Step 2: Assess. Once you have identified a conflict, you need to assess it — evaluate its seriousness, the nature of the relationship between the parties, the scale of the conflict, how likely it is to occur, what harm could result, and whether similar conflicts have arisen before. This is a genuine risk assessment, not a formality. And it needs to be done in the context of your specific business.
Step 3: Respond. This is where the biggest change in ASIC’s expectations sits. Up until now, most businesses have treated disclosure as the primary — and often sole — response to a conflict. Put it in the PDS. Put it in the FSG. Done.
ASIC and the courts are now clear that this is not enough. Effective conflict management requires a combination of three responses: avoiding the conflict, controlling it, and disclosing it. Disclosure alone, especially generic disclosure in an FSG in small font on page two, does not constitute adequate conflict management.
Avoiding means proactively preventing the conflict from arising, or stopping the business from acting when a conflict is so serious it cannot be managed otherwise. ASIC is unusually specific about two situations where avoidance is mandatory: when two clients’ interests are in direct conflict with each other, and when remuneration practices place the licensee’s or representative’s interests in direct conflict with a client’s. In those situations, the business must not act. Every business needs to define where it draws that line.
Controlling means implementing measures that mitigate the risk — information barriers, functional separation of teams, removing a conflicted individual from a transaction, requiring management approval, or increasing compliance monitoring for certain types of activity.
Disclosing means telling affected parties about the conflict in a way that is timely, prominent, specific, and meaningful — so they can actually understand it and make an informed decision before proceeding. If you are going to disclose a conflict, the disclosure cannot be buried. It needs to be pointed out, and you need to document that it was.
Step 4: Monitor and review. Businesses are not static. Products change, distribution arrangements change, staff change, and regulatory obligations change. Your conflict management arrangements need to be reviewed regularly to remain adequate.
Where conflicts actually live in insurance businesses
When the webinar audience was asked where in their businesses conflicts were most likely to arise, the top two answers were incentives and remuneration, and third-party relationships. Both answers reflect where the real risk sits.
In practice, the most common conflicts in the insurance industry look like this:
A broker recommends a product that pays a higher commission, rather than the product that best meets the client’s needs. ASIC cites this as its primary example of a conflict of interest.
A supplier to the industry — a technology provider, a loss adjuster, a service firm — provides better service to the insurers or brokers that hold a shareholding in that supplier, while treating other clients as lower priority. The conflict sits with the supplier, but the insurer or broker with the shareholding is also exposed.
A director sits on the board of both an insurer and a third-party vendor that the insurer uses — and is involved in deciding whether to renew or extend that vendor’s contract.
A claims officer processes a claim that relates to a close friend or family member. This one comes up more often than people realise, and proper frameworks to manage it are frequently absent at the operational level.
The social media problem
One issue the webinar spent time on that deserves specific attention: potential conflicts are as important as actual ones, and what gets posted publicly can create reasonably perceived conflicts that need to be managed.
If a broker attends a high-end insurer function — a VIP event, a yacht in Sydney Harbour, something clearly worth more than $300 per head — and posts about it on social media, the potential conflicts is visible to anyone who looks. Clients can see it. Regulators can see it. The next time that broker recommends a product from that insurer, the question of whether the recommendation was genuinely in the client’s best interest is in the air.
This does not mean the hospitality was impermissible. It means that if you cannot demonstrate you identified, assessed, and managed the conflict — including the reasonably perceived element — then the public record becomes a liability. ASIC looks at what is publicly available.
The gap between policies and reality
The most important thing ASIC has signalled through the updated RG 181 is that generic written policies are not enough. The following do not, by themselves, constitute adequate conflict management arrangements: a conflicts policy that could have been written for any financial services business, a disclosure in an FSG that clients are unlikely to read, a training session that happened once and was not repeated, and a conflicts register that was created but is not maintained or reviewed.
What is required is arrangements that are tailored to the specific nature of your business — its products, its distribution model, its client base, its third-party relationships, its remuneration structures. Arrangements that are actually integrated into how the business operates, not filed away as documents. Arrangements that your representatives understand and can apply in real situations. And arrangements that are documented, monitored, and reviewed.
As Yvonne Lam of Clyde & Co put it clearly during the webinar: the conflicts of interest management obligation applies across the board to all AFS licensees (including in relation to the activities of their representatives in providing financial services). Even if you satisfy yourself that your remuneration arrangements are compliant with the conflicted remuneration rules, you still have this separate, broader obligation to manage conflicts of interest in your business - and ASIC’s expectation of what that looks like has just materially increased.
What You Should Do Now: A Practical Checklist
Review your conflicts of interest policy. Does it name the specific conflicts that exist in your business? Does it set out how each is assessed and managed? Does it define when you will not act? If the policy reads like it could belong to any licensee, it needs to be rebuilt for your business.
Map your actual conflicts. Use ASIC’s seven categories. Identify conflicts at the operational level — claims, distribution, underwriting, vendor relationships — not just at the board or executive level. Conflicts live in operations, not just in policies.
Audit your commission and incentive structures. Both product issuers and distributors need to do this. Review every commission scheme and incentive arrangement and assess whether it falls within the applicable exemptions. For personal advice situations, verify that informed consent processes exist and are working.
Check your AR network. If you have authorised representatives, do you actually know whether they are collecting informed consent before commissions are received? The obligation sits with the licensee. If you cannot demonstrate your ARs are compliant, that risk is yours.
Track non-monetary benefits. Implement a gifts and benefits register if you do not have one. Apply the $300 threshold. Record everything between $100 and $300. Know what is being given and received across your business.
Stop relying on disclosure alone. Look at your FSG and other disclosure documents with fresh eyes. If a conflict is disclosed in small print that a client is unlikely to read or understand, that is not adequate conflict management. Identify where disclosure needs to be supplemented by avoidance or controls.
Define your walk-away scenarios. Every business needs to know when a conflict is so serious that it must not act. Put those scenarios in writing. Make sure the right people know what they are.
Document everything. Conflicts registers, assessment records, management decisions, disclosures made, training conducted. Evidence of compliance is not optional. It is what ASIC will ask for.
Train your people on real examples. Abstract policy training does not work. Use examples from your own business model. Make it specific. Make it practical.
Check your complaints and incidents. Conflicts frequently surface in complaints before they surface anywhere else. Review your complaints for patterns.
The Bottom Line
Two things have changed. The conflicted remuneration exemptions for insurance are narrower and more conditional than they have ever been. And ASIC’s expectations for how conflicts of interest must be managed have materially increased.
Neither of these requires a complete overhaul of how you operate. But both require a genuine, specific, and documented response — not a generic policy refresh, not a line in an FSG, and not an assumption that your existing arrangements are adequate.
The industry needs to up its game. That includes product issuers, distributors, brokers, advisers, and suppliers. The obligations run across the whole ecosystem.
ASIC is not waiting. It has said so explicitly.
About the Speakers
Tetiana George — CEO, Curium
Tetiana is the CEO and Co-Founder of Curium, a no-code tech platform that runs end-to-end claims and compliance. During the past 17 years Tetiana has worked for most of the large global insurers as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and Oliver Wyman (part of Marsh McLennan Group). She advised firms in more than 20 countries across a variety of areas from strategy to operations and product design. Tetiana came to Australia in 2017 and joined Blue Zebra Insurance as Head of Claims & Operations. Having experienced the power of technology firsthand, she started Curium to enable insurers, underwriting agencies, and brokers to enter the market and scale in record time. LinkedIn Profile.
Yvonne Lam — Partner, Clyde & Co
Yvonne is a Partner of Clyde & Co with expertise in a broad range of corporate law areas including establishment of operations, regulatory licensing and distribution, regulatory investigations, mergers & acquisitions, corporate restructures, director’s duties, corporate governance and compliance for the insurance sector. Yvonne has been recognised as a recommended lawyer in the Legal 500 Asia Pacific (2021 and 2020) for Insurance and for Regulatory Investigations and Compliance (2020). She was a finalist in the Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards for Partner of the Year (Big Law — 2024) and for Special Counsel of the Year (2021), and also the Lawyers Weekly 30 under 30 Awards (2018) for Commercial Law. Yvonne has been awarded the inaugural Susan Gin Scholarship to attend the William Ah Ket Leadership Program run by the ANU Centre for Asian-Australian Leadership in 2023. LinkedIn Profile
Mikaela Eldridge — Senior Associate, Clyde & Co
Mikaela Eldridge is a Senior Associate at Clyde & Co with ten years’ experience in investigations and litigation, spanning commercial litigation, regulatory proceedings, and criminal defence advocacy. Prior to returning to private practice, Mikaela was with ASIC, where she conducted and advised on numerous investigations and litigations into suspected market misconduct, financial services and corporate governance failures. She has also practised at leading firms in Sydney, representing multinational corporations and financial institutions in criminal proceedings, regulatory investigations, and complex commercial disputes. LinkedIn Profile
This article is based on the Curium Academy webinar “What You Need to Know About Conflict of Interest and Conflicted Remuneration in Insurance” held on 22 April 2026, hosted in partnership with Clyde & Co. It is intended as general information only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific advice, contact [Curium](https://getcurium.com) or Clyde & Co.*
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the conflicted remuneration ban apply to wholesale clients?
No. The prohibition applies in the context of retail clients. If you are dealing with wholesale clients, the ban does not apply in the same way — but you need to verify the wholesale classification is genuine and documented, not assumed.
Is general insurance fully exempt from the conflicted remuneration ban?
No. General insurance is not a blanket exemption. Monetary benefits for personal advice given to retail clients are only exempt if the client gave informed consent before the commission was received. Without consent, the commission is captured by the ban.
What happens if an authorised representative receives a commission without informed consent?
The commission is conflicted remuneration. Both the representative and the licensee are exposed. The licensee has an obligation to take reasonable steps to ensure its representatives do not accept conflicted remuneration — which means having systems to verify that consent is being collected and documented.
We disclose our commissions in our FSG. Is that enough?
For the conflicted remuneration informed consent requirement, no — an FSG disclosure is not the same as informed consent. And for the conflicts of interest management obligation, generic FSG disclosure alone is not adequate conflict management. Both require specific, documented processes.
Does the conflicts of interest obligation apply even if we are exempt from the conflicted remuneration ban?
Yes. They are separate obligations. Even where a commission or benefit is exempt from the conflicted remuneration ban, it may still create a conflict of interest that requires active management under section 912A(1)(aa) of the Corporations Act. Performance-based remuneration and incentive structures are a particular area of focus.
Is there a transition period for the updated ASIC guidance on conflicts of interest?
No. Industry bodies asked for one. ASIC declined.
Where can I find out more or get help reviewing our frameworks?
Visit [getcurium.com](https://getcurium.com) or contact Curium at [Tetiana@getcurium.com](mailto:Tetiana@getcurium.com).
You can access this course through Curium Academy and, upon completion, earn a certificate with 1 CIP / CPD point. Click here Curium Academy.