By Nathan Isterling, Chief Information Officer, Otivo
Ask ChatGPT whether you should salary sacrifice into super and you'll get a paragraph of generic information bookended by disclaimers. That isn't the AI's fault — it's the law, and the law is there for a reason: to protect people making real financial decisions from advice that isn't held to any standard. Otivo's new app combines that protection with the speed of AI. Operating inside Otivo's Australian Financial Services Licence, it can give personalised financial advice in plain English, in seconds — and it's free for every Australian until 30 June 2026.
Quick answer
Otivo's new mobile app, live on iPhone and Android, is the first licensed AI financial adviser in Australia. Users can ask questions about super, retirement, mortgages, debt and insurance and receive personalised advice in plain English, regulated under Otivo's AFSL and Australian Credit Licence No. 485665 and supervised by qualified human advisers. The app is free for every Australian until 30 June 2026, after which the free window for new users closes.
Why Australia has a financial advice gap
Most Australians have never received personal financial advice. According to Adviser Ratings' 2024 Australian Financial Advice Landscape Report, only around 9% of Australians work with a financial adviser. The reason isn't that the other 91% wouldn't benefit. It's that the numbers don't work. The average cost of an initial statement of advice in Australia sits around $3,500, with ongoing advice running between $2,000 and $4,000 a year on top of that. For a household trying to decide whether to direct an extra $200 a fortnight into the mortgage or into super, paying $3,500 to find out is a non-starter.
This isn't because advisers are overcharging. Human advice is genuinely expensive to deliver — qualified professionals spending hours per client, working under strict compliance obligations that require detailed documentation for every recommendation. Those obligations exist because the law requires them, and the law requires them because financial decisions are consequential. The same rules that make advice high quality also make it expensive.
The result is an "advice gap": millions of Australians making meaningful financial decisions every year — about super, mortgages, retirement, debt — with no licensed guidance, often relying on generic information from web searches, friends, or social media instead. Closing that gap has been Otivo's founding mission. The app is the latest step in delivering on it.
What the Otivo app actually does
The app is built around Ask Otivo — an AI chat experience that lets you type a financial question in plain English (or any language you prefer) and get a real, personalised answer back in seconds.
The questions can be as specific or as broad as you like. Some of what's been coming through since launch:
- A 34-year-old with $12,000 in savings and a credit card balance, asking whether to pay off the card or start investing.
- A couple six years from retirement, asking whether their super is in the right place and they're contributing enough.
- A new parent, asking whether they can afford a bigger mortgage.
- A 28-year-old whose super has been sitting in the default investment option since their first job, asking whether that's costing them money.
These are the questions most Australians sit on for years. They're also the questions where a generic answer doesn't help, because the right answer depends on the person asking.
The app draws on the same six advice modules already available on the Otivo web platform — retirement planning, super investment options, salary sacrifice contributions, tax-deductible personal contributions, personal insurance inside super, and debt advice. What's different is access. The app puts all six into a phone-native chat interface you can open in a supermarket queue, on the train, or — frankly — at 2am when the numbers won't let you sleep.
How is this different from asking ChatGPT?
The most common question we've had since launch is some variation of this one: why use this instead of a free AI tool I already have?
The answer is regulation — and the reason regulation matters.
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and similar tools can give you information about financial topics. What they can't do — what they're explicitly trained and instructed not to do — is give you personalised financial advice. They'll explain how salary sacrifice works. They won't tell you whether to do it. They'll define what a concessional contributions cap is. They won't tell you how much of yours is unused.
That isn't a technical limitation. It's a legal one — and the law exists for a reason.
Financial advice law in Australia was built to protect people. Personal financial decisions shape housing, retirement, family security — outcomes too important to leave to providers who aren't accountable for the quality of what they recommend. So the law requires anyone giving personal financial advice to hold a licence, follow a "best-interests duty", document their reasoning, be supervised by qualified humans, and answer to regulators and an independent dispute resolution body. Those rules limit what unlicensed AI can do. They also protect the people receiving the advice from getting something that looks confident but isn't held to any standard.
Otivo built the app to keep every one of those protections in place. Our AFSL and Australian Credit Licence No. 485665 covers everything the app does. The AI gives you the answer; the licensing infrastructure underneath makes sure the answer is held to the same legal standards as advice from any human adviser.
What "licensed" actually means in this context
Three things, mostly.
First, the advice has to meet the same regulatory standards as advice from a human adviser. The app operates under Otivo's AFSL, which means every recommendation is subject to the same conduct standards, disclosure obligations, and best-interests requirements that apply to traditional advisers. ASIC regulates the licence. The Australian Financial Complaints Authority handles disputes.
Second, the AI doesn't operate alone. Qualified human financial advisers supervise the system, review its outputs, and are accountable for the advice it provides. This isn't a generic large language model with a different prompt — it's an AI system built specifically for financial advice and overseen by people whose professional accreditation depends on the quality of what it produces.
Third, the advice is written down. Every answer the app provides is documented in a record-of-advice format, with the reasoning visible. That's the same legal infrastructure that applies to a written statement of advice from a human adviser — and it's what makes it actually advice, rather than information dressed up in confident language.
Together, those three things are the safety net. They're what the law requires of anyone giving personal financial advice, and they're what protect the person receiving it. The AI is what makes the advice fast — an answer in seconds, on your phone, in plain English. AI without licensing gives you speed without accountability. Licensed advice without AI gives you accountability without scale. The app delivers both.
The Australian Financial Review recognised this approach in May 2026, naming the Otivo app a finalist in its AI Innovation Awards. Independent recognition matters in a category where the gap between "AI that talks about finance" and "AI that's legally authorised to advise on finance" is invisible to most users — but profound in practice.
Free for every Australian until 30 June
The most direct way to understand what the app does is to use it. That's why, until 30 June 2026, the app is free for every Australian.
The free window is open to anyone who downloads the app before the deadline. Existing Otivo users can log in with their existing details. New users can create an account directly in the app.
After 30 June, the free window for new users closes — though anyone who created an account during the free window keeps their access.
Frequently asked questions
Is the advice from the app the same as advice from a human adviser?
It's regulated under the same laws and held to the same legal standards. The format differs — the app delivers advice through chat, where a human adviser would typically deliver it through a meeting and a written statement of advice. The licensing, the documentation requirements, and the legal accountability are the same.
What can I ask the app about?
The app covers super (including investment options, contributions, and salary sacrifice), retirement planning, debt management, personal insurance inside super, and tax-deductible contributions. It doesn't cover self-managed super funds, wills, or aged care planning.
What languages does the app work in?
Plain English is the default, but the AI can engage in most major languages. For many Australian households, that matters — financial decisions don't always get made in the language of the source documents.
What happens after 30 June 2026?
Free access closes for new users. People who download and create an account before the deadline keep their access. Otivo's existing subscription plans continue for users wanting ongoing access beyond the free window.
Where to from here
The Otivo app is live on the App Store and Google Play. For existing Otivo users, logging in takes seconds. For new users, account creation happens inside the app itself.
For most people, the most useful first question is the one they've been carrying around — the financial decision that's been sitting at the back of the mind for months, or years, waiting for a moment that never quite arrives. The app exists for that question.
Sources
- Adviser Ratings, "Australian Financial Advice Landscape Report 2024." Cost-of-advice figures and adviser engagement rates among Australians. adviserratings.com.au
- Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Regulator of Australian Financial Services Licence holders, including the best-interests duty and disclosure obligations referenced in this article. asic.gov.au
- Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). Independent dispute resolution body for financial services. afca.org.au
- Australian Financial Review, AI Innovation Awards 2026. Finalist announcement, 2 June 2026. afr.com
- Otivo product information and platform documentation. otivo.com
Disclaimer
The information in this communication is current as at May 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.