asic-mcp

mcp-name: io.ausdata/asic-mcp

MCP server for Australian Securities and Investments Commission registers. Plain-English access to the Financial Advisers Register, AFS Licensees, AFS Authorised Representatives, Credit Licensees, Banned & Disqualified Persons and Organisations, and Registered Liquidators — every one updated weekly by ASIC and served via data.gov.au.

Hosted access? For cross-source queries, webhooks, an always-on REST API, and a uniform response envelope across all 9 sources, see ausdata.io — free tier available (500 calls/mo, no card).

"Is Jane Smith a registered financial adviser?"
"Find every AFS licensee in NSW with 'Westpac' in the name."
"List all banned persons added since 2024-01-01."
"Who's the registered liquidator for KordaMentha?"
"Which credit licensees were suspended last year?"

Sister to abs-mcp (Australian Bureau of Statistics), rba-mcp (Reserve Bank of Australia), ato-mcp (Australian Taxation Office), apra-mcp (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority), aihw-mcp (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare), and au-weather-mcp (Australian weather). All seven together cover the macro / regulator / health / tax / climate layer of Australian official data.

Install

# Run on demand via uvx (recommended)
uvx --upgrade asic-mcp

# Or install permanently
pip install asic-mcp

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "asic": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["--upgrade", "asic-mcp"] }
  }
}

Why --upgrade? uvx asic-mcp (without the flag) uses whatever wheel is cached and never adopts new PyPI releases on its own. --upgrade makes uvx check PyPI on each launch and pull a newer release if one exists. To verify which version is currently serving you, look at the server_version field on any DataResponse.

Claude Code / Cursor

claude mcp add asic --command uvx --args -- --upgrade asic-mcp

Auto-updating data

Beyond the wheel-level --upgrade, the server has a second auto-update path inside the data layer: every register snapshot on data.gov.au is reissued each week (some monthly) at a stable resource UUID. asic-mcp resolves that UUID via data.gov.au's CKAN API at fetch time and uses the freshest match. Hard-coded YAML URLs are the safe fallback if CKAN discovery fails. You do not need to wait for a new wheel release to get new weekly data — the 24-hour cache TTL means a fresh snapshot lands within a day. Force-refresh by deleting ~/.asic-mcp/cache.db.

What it exposes

Five tools, all plain-English in, structured out:

Every response is the same shape — dataset_id, dataset_name, query, period, unit, row_count, records, source_url, attribution, server_version, stale — across every curated dataset.

Curated datasets (7)

Adding a new dataset is a single YAML drop into src/asic_mcp/data/curated/ — see CONTRIBUTING.md. v0.2 roadmap below adds enforcement statistics, short-position reports, and a streaming-lookup tool for the 373 MB Company Register.

Example queries (paste into Claude)

Cross-source compatibility. The state filter on every register accepts canonical state codes ("NSW"), full names ("New South Wales"), case-insensitive variants ("nsw"), ISO 3166-2 ("AU-NSW"), and 4-digit postcodes ("2000" → NSW). Powered by aus-identity — the same input format works across abs-mcp, ato-mcp, apra-mcp, aihw-mcp, and asic-mcp.

Compliance check: "Confirm whether AFSL 234945 is a current AFS licensee, who the legal name is, and what financial services it's authorised to deal in."

Consumer protection: "Has anyone with the surname 'Smith' been banned by ASIC in the last 5 years? Show the ban type, dates, and the public comment."

Insolvency: "List every Registered Liquidator practising under KordaMentha in NSW and Victoria."

Adviser lookup: "Find financial adviser number 000221137 — current/ceased, licensee, and qualifications."

Credit broker due diligence: "For Australian Credit Licence 219612, give me the licensee name, status, EDR scheme membership, and a summary of the authorisations text."

Each prompt resolves to one get_data (or latest) call. The response includes the source URL and CC-BY 3.0 AU attribution so the agent can cite it back.

Architecture

Same shape as the sister packages — client → cache → parsing → shaping → server:

• client.py wraps httpx with a SQLite-backed disk cache and an in-flight dedup so a burst of latest() calls fans into one HTTP request. Sends a polite User-Agent — data.gov.au's CDN blocks the default httpx UA.
• parsing.py reads CSV via pandas, with delimiter auto-sniffing because ASIC labels every file ".csv" but ships some as tab-separated (Financial Advisers, AFS Auth Rep, Banned Orgs) and some as comma-separated (AFS Licensee, Credit Licensee, Banned Persons, Liquidator).
• curated.py loads dataset specs from data/curated/*.yaml — each one declares its dimensions, dimension-value enums, source/download URLs, and CKAN discovery hints.
• discovery.py resolves the freshest CKAN resource URL at query time; falls back to the YAML default on any failure.
• shaping.py transforms the parsed DataFrame into DataResponse (records / series / csv). For register data (no measure columns) it emits one Observation per row with all dimensions populated.
• server.py is the FastMCP entrypoint — five tools, full input validation with helpful "Try X" hints on error.

Cache lives under ~/.asic-mcp/cache.db. ASIC registers refresh weekly, so the byte cache TTL is 24 hours and the CKAN catalogue cache is 1 hour.

Attribution

Source: Australian Securities and Investments Commission, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY 3.0 AU). Data accessed via data.gov.au. © Commonwealth of Australia. The MCP server is MIT-licensed; the underlying register data carries the CC-BY 3.0 AU licence, which is echoed verbatim in every response's attribution field.

Sister MCPs (Australian Public Data portfolio)

Want all 9 sources behind one REST API? The hosted gateway at ausdata.io adds cross-source joins, full history, webhooks, and HMAC-signed responses on top of these MCPs — free tier (500 calls/mo, no card).