By Paul Feeney, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Otivo
It's one of the most common questions put to anyone in financial services, and the answer disappoints almost everyone who asks it. Someone has money to invest, a rough sense that shares and crypto are where growth lives, and a reasonable expectation that a licensed professional will name a few. What they get instead is a conversation about time horizons. That looks like evasion. It isn't — it's the licensing system doing precisely what it was built to do, and understanding why turns a frustrating answer into a useful one.
Whether a financial adviser can recommend individual shares depends on the authorisations in the Australian Financial Services Licence they operate under, and on meeting the best interests duty that applies to personal advice. As at August 2026, ASIC's updated INFO 225 guidance treats many digital assets as financial products under existing law.
What is a financial adviser actually licensed to do?
An adviser can only provide financial services covered by the authorisations on the licence they operate under, and those authorisations are granted by class of product.
An Australian Financial Services Licence issued by ASIC lists what the holder is authorised to advise on and deal in — superannuation, securities, managed investments, insurance, deposit products, derivatives and so on. Some licensees are authorised to advise on securities, which includes listed shares. Many are not, and plenty of digital and scaled-advice providers are deliberately authorised for a narrower set of products in order to give consistent, testable advice within it. Otivo, for example, holds AFSL and Australian Credit Licence No. 485665 and advises within a defined set of areas — super, contributions, insurance inside super, and debt.
So the honest answer to the headline question is that it depends on who you're asking, and the place to check is ASIC's Financial Advisers Register, which records what each adviser is authorised to provide.
The second layer is what kind of advice it is
Two different regimes sit underneath the same word, and the distinction decides what can be said to you personally.
General advice doesn't take your objectives, financial situation or needs into account. It's information and opinion about a product or strategy in the abstract, and it has to carry a general advice warning telling you exactly that.
Personal advice does take your circumstances into account, and it triggers the obligations in the Corporations Act — including the duty to act in your best interests, and the requirement that the advice be appropriate to you.
A stock pick handed to a particular person is personal advice, whatever it's called. It can only be given by someone authorised for that product class, who has gathered enough about your circumstances to satisfy the best interests duty, and who is accountable for the recommendation afterwards through their licensee and through AFCA. That's a considerable amount of machinery, and it's the reason a ticker code doesn't get tossed across a table.
Where does crypto sit in all this?
This is the part where most people's information is a year or two out of date, because the regulatory position has moved substantially.
The old shorthand — crypto is unregulated, so nobody can advise on it — no longer describes the landscape. ASIC's updated Information Sheet 225, published in its revised form in late 2025, sets out the regulator's view that the financial product definitions in the Corporations Act are broad and technology-neutral, and that many digital assets fall within them under existing law. Stablecoins and tokenised securities were among the categories ASIC expanded its guidance on.
Alongside that, ASIC issued a sector-wide no-action position to give digital asset businesses time to apply for licences, extended to 30 September 2026, and the government is legislating a dedicated framework for digital asset platforms and tokenised custody platforms expected to commence in 2027.
The practical upshot for someone asking about crypto is not that it sits outside the rules. It's that the rules are being applied to it in real time, that whether any particular asset is a financial product is a legal question rather than a marketing one, and that ASIC's MoneySmart is direct about the risk characteristics of the asset class. An adviser declining to name a coin is not dodging a regulated question — quite often they're declining to answer an unregulated one.
The four questions that come before a stock pick
Here's the part that makes the conversation worth having anyway. In practice, the choice of individual holding is the last and least consequential decision in the sequence, and the four that precede it are all things a licensed conversation can cover.
How long is the money invested for? A horizon of eighteen months and a horizon of eighteen years point to entirely different asset classes, and this single question resolves more portfolio confusion than any other.
What proportion of total wealth is this? Money that would cause real hardship if lost sits differently from money that wouldn't. For most Australians the largest investment portfolio they own is their super, and it's often the one they've never looked at.
How concentrated is it? Diversification is the one part of investing where the mechanism is well understood and not seriously contested. A single holding carries risk specific to that company that a broad exposure doesn't.
What's already happening inside super? Super is invested too, and the investment option chosen there is one of the levers that affects long-term outcomes. It's common for someone researching share purchases to have a much larger sum sitting in a default option they've never reviewed.
None of those four requires anyone to name a company, and all four change the answer more than the ticker does.
Why the limits are the point
It would be easy to read all of the above as a list of things advisers can't do. It's more accurate to read it as a description of what makes advice worth relying on.
The licensing regime exists because financial recommendations affect people's lives and are easy to make badly. Authorisations mean the person advising you has demonstrated competence in that product class. The best interests duty means the recommendation has to be appropriate for you rather than convenient for them. AFCA membership means there's somewhere to go if it goes wrong. A recommendation offered without any of that scaffolding — in a forum, a group chat, a video — costs nothing and is worth about the same.
Anyone can give you a stock pick. The distinguishing feature of licensed advice is that someone is answerable for it.
Frequently asked questions
Can a financial adviser recommend ETFs but not individual shares?
It depends on the licence authorisations. Exchange traded funds are financial products, so advising on them requires the relevant authorisation just as advising on direct shares does. Some licensees are authorised for one and not the other.
Is a share tip from a newsletter or podcast financial advice?
It may be general advice, which is why such content usually carries a general advice warning. It isn't personal advice, because the person providing it knows nothing about your circumstances and has no obligation to act in your best interests.
Can an adviser tell you to sell crypto you already hold?
Where the asset is a financial product and the adviser is authorised for it, advice can be given subject to the usual obligations. Where it isn't, the position is less straightforward, which is one of the things the incoming digital asset framework is intended to resolve.
How do you check what an adviser is authorised to advise on?
ASIC maintains the Financial Advisers Register, which records each adviser's authorisations, their licensee and their history. It's searchable and free.
Where this leaves you
The question behind the question is usually "where should this money go", and that one has a licensed answer even when the stock pick doesn't. It starts with horizon, proportion, concentration, and what super is already doing — and the last of those is where the largest sums usually sit. Otivo, a licensed Australian financial advice platform holding AFSL and Australian Credit Licence No. 485665, has a super investment options module that looks at your current age, current option, historical returns and fees to help you understand how that choice affects your retirement income. It won't hand you a ticker code. It will tell you something more useful about the biggest investment you already own.
Sources
- ASIC — Australian Financial Services Licence authorisations, the Financial Advisers Register, and Information Sheet 225 Digital assets, financial products and services — asic.gov.au
- ASIC MoneySmart — financial advice and the risks of crypto assets — moneysmart.gov.au
- Australian Financial Complaints Authority — complaints about financial advice — afca.org.au
Disclaimer
The information in this communication is current as at August 2026 and has been prepared by Otivo Pty Ltd ABN 47 602 457 732, AFSL and Australian Credit Licence No. 485665. This content is general information only and has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. It is not personal financial or taxation advice and should not be relied on as such. Before acting on any information, you should consider its appropriateness having regard to your personal circumstances. This material must not be reproduced in whole or in part, or posted on any social media platform, without the prior written consent of Otivo Pty Ltd.