The European Parliament has voted to push back the deadline for high-risk AI system compliance under the EU AI Act. As reported by Computerworld, stand-alone high-risk AI systems now have until December 2027 to comply, while AI embedded in regulated products gets until August 2028. But there’s a catch: the EU Council still needs to approve the delay, and if negotiations drag past August 2026, the original deadlines snap back into force.

This matters for Australian wealth managers more than it might seem. If your firm uses AI-powered tools for portfolio analysis, client risk scoring, or automated advice — and those tools are developed or hosted by EU-based providers — the AI Act’s requirements will flow through to you indirectly. EU providers will need to meet transparency, data governance, and human oversight obligations for high-risk systems, which includes AI used in financial decision-making. Even with the delay, only 8 of 27 EU member states have set up their national supervisory bodies, and the European Commission missed its own February 2026 deadline to publish technical guidance. The regulatory infrastructure simply isn’t ready, but the obligations are still coming.

Gartner analyst Nader Henein put it bluntly: organisations should proceed as though the original deadlines still apply. For wealth managers, that means documenting which AI tools you use, understanding where they’re hosted and who built them, and asking your vendors about their EU AI Act compliance roadmap. If you’re using AI for anything that touches client money or advice, you should also be thinking about how you’d explain those decisions to a regulator — because that’s exactly what the Act will eventually require.

All IT Services works with financial services firms to audit their technology stack and ensure compliance readiness. Talk to us about your AI and compliance posture.