ASIC Pushes for Coordinated Action on Capital Markets Modernisation
Australia's financial markets regulator has drawn a clear line: adapt to distributed ledger technology, tokenised assets, and machine-speed trading, or watch capital migrate to jurisdictions that already have. On 29 June 2026, ASIC convened its first senior-level roundtable on capital markets modernisation, presenting research that warns Australia risks falling behind as peer jurisdictions accelerate their adoption of financial market innovation. For accounting firms, auditors, and CFOs with exposure to digital assets or listed-market infrastructure, the session marks a shift from consultation to coordinated action.
What Triggered the Roundtable
The DFCRC Research Findings
ASIC commissioned the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) to produce a report examining the pace of change across global capital markets. The findings are direct: financial markets are growing more automated, settlement cycles are compressing, and trading hours in traditional markets are extending. The DFCRC research identifies agentic AI, autonomous trading systems, and AI-assisted supervision tools as forces already entering the hands of traders and market operators, not future risks to monitor but present realities to manage.
The report also documents how standards bodies, governments, and regulators across major jurisdictions are actively reshaping their market frameworks to accommodate DLT, tokenised assets, and enhanced IT systems. That international momentum is applying direct competitive pressure on Australia.
The Geographic Moat Is Gone
ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant framed the stakes plainly at the roundtable. The technological barriers that once kept domestic capital relatively captive are eroding. Wholesale and retail investors now find it easier than ever to direct capital offshore, and large-scale technology IPOs listing outside Australia are, in her words, a symptom of this trend that will only become more common. The message to industry: a passive posture is not a neutral one.
Key Priorities ASIC Is Signalling
Modernised Infrastructure and Automated Surveillance
ASIC's preferred direction includes modernised market infrastructure, automated market surveillance capabilities, and sustained public-private collaboration. The regulator is also pointing toward regular coordination with global counterpart regulators, reflecting a recognition that cross-border capital flows demand cross-border regulatory coherence. This builds on ASIC's work alongside the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in supervising transformation at Australia's critical national market infrastructure level.
Constructive Regulatory Support for New Products
The roundtable explicitly focuses on what ASIC can and should do about the practical opportunities that safe innovation presents. The regulator is signalling a willingness to provide regulatory clarity and support for firms testing and operationalising new products, rather than waiting for static rulemaking to catch up with market developments. Commissioner Constant described ASIC's role as providing the clarity necessary for responsible innovation alongside guardrails that keep markets stable and infrastructure operators accountable.
Risks ASIC Wants the Industry to Take Seriously
Concentration Risk and Retail Exposure
The DFCRC research flags that some developments could create pockets of heightened concentration risk, particularly where firms rely heavily on external technology service providers. The report also highlights amplified retail risks in gamified and social trading environments. Firms should read this as a prompt to review both their third-party dependency disclosures and how their client-facing digital services are structured.
Frontier AI and Cyber Resilience
Maintaining resilience standards in an era of frontier AI and rising cyber risk sits alongside the innovation agenda, not behind it. ASIC is clearly signalling that the two priorities are inseparable. Firms that treat cyber and AI governance as compliance box-ticking rather than operational priorities are likely to find that stance increasingly difficult to defend as ASIC's supervisory lens sharpens.
The Regulatory Timeline Behind This Moment
A Sequence of Coordinated Actions
The June 2026 roundtable sits within a dense sequence of related ASIC work. In November 2025, ASIC released a roadmap for strong, efficient, and globally competitive capital markets. Throughout 2025, it supported an RBA and DFCRC project examining the role of digital money in wholesale tokenised asset markets, providing regulatory relief to project participants in July 2025. In April 2026, ASIC published its landmark inquiry report into the ASX group, focused on governance, capability, and risk management within critical market infrastructure. In May 2026, a further DFCRC report was published to inform responsible financial innovation engagement. The June roundtable is therefore not an isolated event but a progression, and ASIC has stated it will release a summary of themes and practical actions that emerge from it.
For firms tracking tokenised asset positions accurately in your digital asset accounting software, this regulatory sequence matters: each step is narrowing the gap between ASIC's stated direction and enforceable obligations.
What This Means for Accounting Firms, Auditors, and CFOs
Digital Asset Accounting and Record-Keeping Readiness
The DFCRC findings and ASIC's public statements together confirm that tokenised assets are being treated as a mainstream capital markets concern, not a fringe technology question. Accounting firms advising ASX-listed clients, fund managers, or treasury teams with digital asset exposure should be reviewing whether their current crypto accounting software and crypto bookkeeping software setups can handle the record-keeping demands that tokenised securities and DLT-settled transactions will generate. Regulatory frameworks are being built around the assumption that firms have this infrastructure in place.
Audit and Disclosure Considerations
Auditors working with entities that hold, issue, or transact in tokenised assets will need to assess how automated settlement and compressed clearing cycles affect their evidence-gathering procedures and cut-off testing. ASIC's emphasis on automated market surveillance also signals that its own supervisory data capabilities are being upgraded, which has direct implications for the quality of disclosures auditors should be able to rely on from regulated market participants.
It is also worth connecting this to how regulators are reshaping market frameworks globally: the ESMA MiCA framework for non-ART/EMT offerings in Europe, for example, is running on a parallel track, and Australian firms with cross-border operations face an increasingly layered set of digital asset disclosure obligations.
FAQs
What was the purpose of ASIC's June 2026 roundtable?
ASIC brought together senior leaders from the public and private sector to identify practical ways to strengthen and modernise Australia's capital markets. The session was informed by DFCRC research showing that other jurisdictions are adopting DLT, tokenised assets, and AI-driven market tools at a pace that puts Australia at competitive risk if it does not respond.
Which technologies is ASIC most focused on?
The DFCRC research commissioned by ASIC highlights distributed ledger technology, tokenised assets, agentic AI, autonomous trading systems, and AI-assisted supervision tools. The regulator sees these as reshaping market structure globally, with direct implications for Australian market infrastructure and participants.
What risks did ASIC identify alongside the innovation opportunities?
ASIC and the DFCRC research flag concentration risk arising from heavy reliance on external technology providers, amplified retail risks in gamified and social trading, and the challenge of maintaining resilience standards against frontier AI and elevated cyber threats.
How does this affect firms using crypto accounting or digital asset accounting software?
As tokenised assets move toward mainstream capital markets treatment under ASIC's framework, firms will need record-keeping and reconciliation capabilities that match automated, DLT-settled transaction flows. Crypto bookkeeping software that cannot handle tokenised securities or compressed settlement cycles will become a gap risk as regulatory expectations firm up.
When will ASIC publish the outcomes of the roundtable?
ASIC has stated it will release a summary of the themes and practical actions from the roundtable. No specific publication date has been given in the media release.
Source: ASIC Media Release 26-138MR