Choosing a JAS-ANZ accredited certification body: what accreditation actually means

A management-system certificate is only worth what the body issuing it is worth. In Australia that question has a specific answer: is the certification body accredited by JAS-ANZ for the scheme and the scope on your certificate.

Certificates from unaccredited bodies exist, are cheap, and fail due diligence. This article sets out the difference, how to verify it in a few minutes, and where Australian law makes accreditation compulsory rather than optional.

Accreditation and certification are not the same thing

Certification is an assessment of your organisation. Accreditation is an assessment of the body doing the assessing.

The chain has three links:

1. You operate a management system.
2. A certification body audits it and issues a certificate.
3. An accreditation body assesses the certification body's competence, consistency and impartiality, and grants accreditation for defined schemes and scopes.

The requirements certification bodies must meet are set out in ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, which covers competence of personnel, impartiality, the audit process, and the certification decision. An accreditation body audits against that standard, and against scheme-specific requirements for each standard.

The practical consequence: nothing stops an unaccredited organisation from selling a document that says "ISO 9001 certificate". Whether anyone will accept it is a different question, and the answer from serious procurement teams is usually no.

What JAS-ANZ is and what it accredits

The Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand is the accreditation body for both countries, established in 1991 under a treaty between the Australian and New Zealand governments.

Key facts, from the JASANZ website and its explanation of what accreditation is:

• It is an independent third-party accreditation body, government-backed, with offices in Canberra and Wellington.
• It accredits conformity assessment bodies — the organisations that certify or inspect management systems, products, processes, services and people.
• Its accreditation is internationally recognised through the mutual recognition arrangements described below.
• It accredits across program areas spanning business, environment and sustainability, food and biological systems, health and human services, and product certification.

The Commonwealth describes JAS-ANZ's role within Australia's standards and conformance infrastructure in this Department of Industry publication.

An important nuance: JAS-ANZ is not the only accreditation body whose certificates are accepted in Australia. Bodies accredited by other recognised national accreditation bodies — through the mutual recognition arrangements — are generally accepted too. What is not accepted is a certificate from a body with no accreditation at all, or with accreditation from an organisation that is not itself a recognised accreditation body.

How to verify a certification body before you sign

Verification takes about five minutes and should be done before you sign, not after.

1. Search the public register. JAS-ANZ maintains a register of accredited bodies at register.jasanz.org. Find the certification body by name.
2. Check the scheme. Accreditation is granted per scheme. A body accredited for ISO 9001 is not automatically accredited for ISO 27001 or ISO 45001. Confirm the specific standard you need appears.
3. Check the scope. Accreditation for a scheme is further limited by technical scope — the industry sectors the body is competent to audit. A body accredited for ISO 45001 in office environments may not be accredited for underground mining.
4. Check status and dates. Accreditation can be suspended or withdrawn. Confirm it is current.
5. Ask for the accreditation mark and number, and check the number matches the register entry.
6. For non-JAS-ANZ bodies, identify their accreditation body and confirm it is a recognised national accreditation body that is a signatory to the international mutual recognition arrangement.

Do the same check on any supplier certificate you are relying on. A supplier's ISO 27001 certificate from an unaccredited body tells you nothing about the supplier's security, and if you have relied on it in your own risk assessment, that reliance is a weakness in your program.

Scope of accreditation: the detail buyers check

Scope is where certificates most often disappoint the person relying on them, and it operates at two levels.

The certificate scope statement is the sentence a procurement team reads. Three failure patterns recur:

• Wrong legal entity. The certificate names a parent while the contracting entity is a subsidiary not covered.
• Wrong activity. A certificate covering "provision of consulting services" does not cover a hosted software platform.
• Wrong site. Multi-site organisations sometimes certify a subset and market it as organisation-wide.

Read your own certificate the way a sceptical customer would. If the scope statement does not clearly cover the entity and activity under contract, the certificate will not answer the question.

Australian schemes where accreditation is compulsory

Three Australian regulatory regimes make accredited third-party audit a condition of participation, not a market preference.

NDIS. Registered providers are audited against the NDIS Practice Standards by approved quality auditors, and JAS-ANZ manages and administers the approved quality auditor scheme on behalf of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. Providers must select an auditor from the approved list — the Commission publishes how to find an auditor and the quality audit process. Note that applications to become an approved quality auditor have been suspended pending reform, so the pool of available auditors is fixed for now. See certification vs verification audits, the obligation ndis-practice-standards, and the NDIS Commission profile.

Vocational education. Registered training organisations are audited by ASQA against the RTO standards. This is direct regulatory audit rather than accredited certification, but the discipline is the same — see the ASQA audit guide and the obligation rto-standards.

Product certification schemes. A range of Australian product schemes — building products, electrical equipment, organic certification and others — require certification from an accredited body, and the accreditation is the mechanism the regulator relies on.

Outside these, accreditation is a commercial requirement. Government tenders and enterprise supplier onboarding routinely specify "certification by a JAS-ANZ accredited body" or equivalent. Confirm which Australian obligations actually bind your operations using the obligation checker before you decide which certifications to pursue.

Unaccredited certificates and the consumer-law risk

Marketing a certificate in a way that overstates what it is carries Australian Consumer Law exposure.

Section 29 of the ACL prohibits false or misleading representations that goods or services are of a particular standard, quality, grade or composition, and section 18 prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct generally. The ACCC's guidance on false or misleading claims sets out the general position, and Rules Mate covers the provisions in misleading and deceptive conduct under sections 18 and 29.

The claims that create risk:

• "ISO certified" with no standard, scope or body named.
• Presenting an unaccredited certificate as equivalent to an accredited one.
• Marketing organisation-wide certification when the certificate scope covers one site or one entity.
• Continuing to display a certificate after suspension, withdrawal or expiry.
• Confusing self-declaration with certification — a statement that you are "compliant with ISO 27001" is not certification and should never be presented as such.

State the standard, the edition, the scope and the certification body. Run marketing copy through the marketing compliance check before publication, and see the ACCC profile for enforcement posture.

The 2026 change: IAF and ILAC became one body

International recognition of accreditation changed structurally on 1 January 2026, and certificates and marketing material may still reference the old arrangements.

The International Accreditation Forum, which operated the multilateral recognition arrangement for management-system certification, and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation, which operated the equivalent for laboratories, merged into a single organisation: Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated. It commenced full operations on 1 January 2026 with its own multilateral recognition arrangement covering the scopes previously recognised under both predecessor arrangements. See the announcement from the Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation.

What this changes for you:

• Existing accredited results remain recognised. The merger was designed for continuity; certificates did not become invalid.
• The recognition principle is unchanged — accreditation obtained once is accepted across signatory economies, which is what makes an Australian certificate usable in an offshore tender.
• References may be stale. Marketing material, tender responses and certificate artwork referring to the former arrangement are not wrong about the substance, but should be updated as they are refreshed.
• Do not treat this as a reason to re-certify. Nobody needs a new certificate because of the merger.

JAS-ANZ was a signatory to the predecessor arrangements for both management-system certification and laboratory accreditation, which is why an Australian accredited certificate travels. Confirm a body's current international recognition on the JASANZ register rather than relying on a marketing claim.

Questions to put to a certification body

Ask these before signing, and compare answers across at least three bodies quoting against an identical scope statement.

1. What is your accreditation body, and what is your accreditation number? (Then verify it on the register yourself.)
2. Are you accredited for this specific standard and for our technical sector?
3. What audit duration have you assessed for our scope, and what drove that number?
4. What is your policy on grading major versus minor non-conformances, and what are the closure timeframes?
5. Who will lead the audit team, and what is their competence in our sector?
6. What is your policy on impartiality — have you provided any consulting to us, and would that preclude you?
7. What is the surveillance schedule and what will each surveillance audit cover?
8. What are your rules on scope changes, additional sites and transfer of certification from another body?
9. What happens if we are acquired or restructure?
10. What are your total fees across the three-year cycle, including surveillance and any transition audits for standard revisions?

Question 10 matters because the cheapest initial audit is frequently not the cheapest cycle. Compare audit days and total three-year cost, and read surveillance audits, non-conformances and maintaining certification so you know what you are buying across the full cycle.