Simone Constant
ASIC has announced the formation of the Markets Expert Advisory Group, bringing together market leaders and experts to help identify and prioritise practical improvements to the resilience, efficiency, accessibility and competitiveness of Australia’s capital markets.
Australia has an opportunity to be a world-leading market for capital formation. Our superannuation system is projected to be the world’s second largest by the early 2030s and reach $8.1 trillion by 2035. Realising that opportunity means improving access for domestic and overseas investors, expanding capital-raising pathways, including for small and medium-sized enterprises, enhancing liquidity and growing the overall market, while maintaining strong foundations and trust. This not only strengthens our markets but creates opportunities for Australians by helping small and medium businesses raise capital and create jobs onshore, supporting broader innovation and productivity.
The announcement follows ASIC’s reconvened Financial Markets and Innovation Roundtable on 27 October 2026, which considered how Australian markets are responding to technological change, global competition for capital, and increasing interdependencies across markets.
ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said, ‘Australia starts from a strong base, with rapidly growing debt markets, historically strong equity markets, a superannuation sector worth more than $4 trillion and a long and proud history of being a nation of investors, with half of Australians holding investments outside their superannuation or their family home. But global competition for capital is intensifying, investment opportunities and access are globalising and we cannot stand still.’
Transparent markets support investment, capital formation, wealth participation, and sustainable and confident economic growth. The advisory group will bring industry experience and international perspectives to help Australia navigate the practical choices needed to maintain strong and trusted markets into the future.
‘We are operating in a heightened strategic risk environment of market and credit risk uncertainty, growing cyber, AI and real economy risks and industrial-scale disruption and globalisation of traditional investment and capital markets operations and practices,’ continued Commissioner Constant.
‘A renewed focus on resilience and transparency is vital. Our ambition should be to grow Australia’s capital markets while maintaining the trust and confidence on which they depend. Our goal should not be to simply remain relevant in this change super-cycle, but to lay foundations for Australia to thrive and grow in the changed economic world that is forming.’
The new advisory group will help ASIC and industry consider strategic choices and identify practical actions that support the public interest in Australia’s markets. It will bring together participants from across the markets ecosystem to address shared challenges and opportunities.
Priorities and insights from ASIC’s Roundtable (27 October 2026)
Roundtable participants noted the accelerating pace of change, significant international developments and their implications for Australian markets, and strong interest in meaningful innovation to improve competitiveness.
They identified rising costs, fragmented infrastructure, access frictions, corporate reporting requirements, isolating domestic settings, gaps in transparency and information and a heightened strategic risk environment.
The priorities identified were broadly consistent with those raised at ASIC’s June 2026 roundtable and were reflected across four interconnected themes.
1. Resilience as a market wide priority
The roundtable heard that Australia should build on its strong foundations by considering the operational practices needed to keep the market ecosystem resilient and give participants confidence to take well managed risk. They discussed dependencies and concentration, weaknesses in collateral management, the role of transparency and clarity about appetite and practices and the need for effective end-to-end testing, alongside the importance of industry coordination.
Practical proposals included identifying the infrastructure and material services that are critical to the operation of Australia’s markets, mapping key dependencies and areas of supplier concentration, and testing severe but plausible disruption scenarios across the market.
Participants also called for agreed definitions and clearer expectations and information, alongside sound operational practices to support robust and transparent valuations across public and private markets. They highlighted transparency in bond markets and the increasing influence on markets as large investors manage liquidity and risk. This would reduce the risk that leverage, opacity and liquidity mismatches amplify market stress.
2. Enhancing liquidity and access to encourage participation
Liquidity and the economics and mechanics of liquidity emerged as common priorities. Participants identified market data and connectivity costs, cost-recovery arrangements, short-selling settings, friction, interface and handover points and other access costs as potential barriers to attracting and retaining liquidity providers in Australia’s markets.
These concerns were particularly acute outside the largest listed entities with index participation, where thinner liquidity can reduce research coverage, weaken price formation and constrain access to capital. Participants also identified the concentration of liquidity during the trading day and the operation of closing auctions as areas for further consideration.
Participants noted that attracting companies to list, and investors to provide capital, is only one part of the broader challenge of improving the attractiveness of Australia’s markets. All companies, but especially smaller companies also need an ecosystem that supports them after listing. Participants discussed differentiated disclosure or trading arrangements, allocated market makers and lessons Australia could draw from comparable overseas markets. More broadly, participants noted that market access should not be thought about only through an institutional lens. Frictions and inefficient interfaces, alongside potentially isolating structural factors, can also have an access cost for middle market and retail investor participation. Increasing transparency and reducing handoffs and associated costs could also help broaden participation for these investor groups.
Cross-sector work to examine international capital pathways, barriers to participation and foreign-issuer settings, as well as mechanisms and incentives for market makers, could help increase trading activity and strengthen Australia’s market competitiveness. Participants also discussed opportunities to expand the range of investment products available to retail investors, including exchange-traded funds.
3. Modernising market infrastructure to improve efficiency
Participants identified opportunities to reduce avoidable friction in settlement and collateral movement, particularly between domestic and offshore systems. Improved transparency and alignment of sound practices, coupled with better alignment of settlement windows, greater interoperability and improved collateral mobility could improve efficiency and reduce friction for participants.
While some participants supported tokenisation and new infrastructure models, they also raised questions about the pathway from experimentation to regulated operation and opportunities to coordinate across public and private sectors.
Participants noted that tokenisation and other new infrastructure models should address demonstrated market problems without fragmenting liquidity, weakening beneficial netting arrangements or creating new operational and concentration risks.
Participants also said that changes affecting how retail investors engage with markets, including longer trading hours, a move to T+1 settlement, tokenisation or new platforms, would require coordinated implementation and investor education.
The possible removal of paper CHESS holding statements was raised as one example of a change that could affect investors who are less comfortable using digital services. Participants emphasised the continuing importance of investor education as markets and infrastructure evolve.
4. A coordinated response
Participants proposed a market infrastructure roadmap, and called for coordination, to give market participants clearer visibility of government reforms, regulatory priorities, market infrastructure initiatives and associated implementation requirements.
This has been acknowledged and reflected in the complementary initiatives currently underway across the Australian financial system.
Next steps
These considerations will inform ASIC’s continuing work to strengthen the resilience, efficiency and accessibility of Australia’s capital markets.
They will also inform ASIC’s ongoing work across public and private markets and practical proposals for the Markets Expert Advisory Group to test with industry.
ASIC will release updates on the Group’s work, aligned with its Corporate Plan and longer-term regulatory ambition. Statutory and regulatory decisions will remain the responsibility of ASIC.
ASIC’s second Financial Markets and Innovation roundtable attendees
Background
Markets Expert Advisory Group
The Markets Expert Advisory Group is a time-limited advisory body that will provide ASIC with advice, challenge, market expertise and international perspectives. It will help identify and prioritise actions that support efficient, resilient, accessible and internationally competitive capital markets.
The group will comprise approximately 12 members appointed for their relevant expertise.
The group will complement, rather than replace, ASIC’s existing consultative panels, direct industry engagement and other government and industry forums.
Statutory and regulatory decisions will remain the responsibility of ASIC.
More information can be found on ASIC’s stakeholder liaison page.
Promoting resilient, efficient, accessible and globally competitive markets
In November 2025, ASIC released its roadmap to promote strong, efficient and globally competitive public and private markets.
In June 2026, ASIC convened its first Financial Markets and Innovation Roundtable bringing together 32 senior leaders from banking, investment, superannuation, fintech, market infrastructure, academia and government (26-138MR).
Participants brought diverse perspectives on how to keep Australia’s capital markets efficient, resilient and globally competitive while supporting innovation with appropriate investor protections.
Coordinating our response
There will be coordination across the complementary initiatives currently underway across the Australian financial system, including the Government’s announced Financial Innovation Committee and the RBA’s tokenisation initiatives.
The Committee will bring together government, regulators and industry to identify and prioritise opportunities to support financial innovation.
Following the success of Project Acacia, the RBA called for expressions of interest for participants to join groups exploring tokensiation.