Sarah Court

ASIC has released the program for its Annual Forum 2026, which will bring together leaders from business, financial services, markets, government, and the community in Sydney on 17 and 18 November.

The Forum’s theme ‘Staying ahead of the next wave’, examines how Australia can safeguard the integrity of its financial system and maintain confidence for consumers and markets in an environment of accelerating and varied global change.

ASIC Chair Sarah Court said the forum would bring together a range of perspectives to explore how Australia’s financial system can anticipate and respond to the next wave of change.

‘Economic pressures, geopolitical uncertainty, and rapid technological innovation are reshaping our financial system and our markets.’

‘The challenge for all of us – government, business and regulators is to address these factors in a way that is front footed and forward thinking.’

‘ASIC’s Annual Forum is an important opportunity to consider how we navigate these changes together. It is also where ASIC will outline its enforcement priorities for the year ahead, helping ensure Australia’s financial system remains resilient in the face of ongoing disruption.’

Highlights of the 2026 program include:

• A keynote address from The Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP, Treasurer of Australia
• A discussion on the state of the economy bringing together ASIC Chair Sarah Court, RBA Governor Michele Bullock, Productivity Commission Chair Danielle Wood and Coles CEO Leah Weckert
• A session examining how digital assets, retail participation, AI and the growing interconnection of Australian and global markets are changing the way markets operate, with ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant, ASX CEO Anthony Attia, UBS’s Nick Hughes and Betashares CEO Alex Vynokur
• A virtual keynote and Q&A with Martin Wolf CBE, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times in London
• A discussion on how innovation is reshaping how Australians access financial products and services with ASIC Commissioner Kate O’Rourke, CEO, Revolut Bank Matt Baxby, Financial Conduct Authority Head of Innovation Colin Payne, incoming CEO, Redbelly Network Christian Westerlind Wigstrom and Co-Director of the UTS Human Technology Institute Professor Nicholas Davis
• ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland leading a discussion on the human face of global disruption with Professor Brendan Murphy AC, Chair, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, Chandni Gupta, Deputy CEO, Consumer Policy Research Centre and Dr John Coyne, Director, National Security Program, ASPI
• Fireside discussions with Anthropic General Manager of Australia and New Zealand Theo Hourmouzis and Solicitor General Dr Ruth Higgins SC
• A conversation on lifting Australia’s productivity, with ASIC Chair Sarah Court, Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson PSM, NAB CEO Andrew Irvine, and AFR Editor-in-Chief Cosima Marriner.
• The Rest is Politics host Alastair Campbell as the 2026 ASIC Annual Dinner speaker

The Forum will also consider private markets and private credit, trust in professional services firms, the future of financial advice, operational resilience, industry codes, board leadership in a volatile environment, coordination between Australia’s financial regulators, and will announce ASIC’s enforcement priorities for 2027.

The ASIC Annual Forum 2026 will be held on 17 and 18 November at ICC Sydney.

View the full ASIC Annual Forum 2026 program and register.

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Victor Bajanov

The rapid adoption of AI in financial services is creating new and amplified risks for the sector, and governance and risk management practices have not kept pace, according to the Actuaries Institute and UTS Human Technology Institute (HTI).

To help close this gap, the Institutes have partnered to produce a practical guidance resource, AI Risk Management in the Financial Services Sector, including an easy to implement and readily adaptable framework for financial services organisations of all sizes to manage AI risk.

A recent survey by HTI found that while 93% of financial services organisations reported using AI, with the remainder planning to do so, less than half reported conducting risk assessments on their internal use of AI. Fewer than one in three respondents reported AI-specific items on their risk register.

“Despite the growing use and importance of AI, many financial services organisations are ill-equipped to manage the scale, complexity, and evolving risk profile of AI systems.

Organisations that choose to do nothing in this space will be exposed to new risks they are not equipped to deal with,” says Actuaries Institute co-lead author Victor Bajanov.

Earlier this year in separate open letters to the industry, Australia’s peak financial services regulators, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), both called on financial services organisations to significantly step up their governance and risk management of AI.

AI-amplified risks

Mr Bajanov says risks associated with previous technologies are largely driven by human behaviour and are well understood.

In contrast, frontier AI systems don’t follow rules and instead generate responses based on patterns learned from vast amounts of training data. This adds uncertainty to their behaviours and increases the need for effective oversight.

Agentic AI systems create more distance between the responsible humans and the AI system, narrowing the window for meaningful human intervention.

“The financial services sector has well-established processes for managing traditional risks, but AI creates a vastly different risk profile, meaning organisations need to go back to first principles when deciding how to manage AI risks and assign responsibility for oversight. Managing AI risk needs to be much more than a tick-box exercise,” says Mr Bajanov.

HTI Co-Director Professor Nicholas Davis says the essential role financial services plays in our society means organisations have a great responsibility to ensure risk controls are in place to maintain confidence and stability in the system.

“Financial services shapes how we save and spend, who receives credit or insurance and on what terms, and what retirement looks like. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in these decisions and services, effective risk management and governance are vital to maintaining trust and confidence in the sector. This collaboration between the Actuaries Institute and UTS HTI brings together deep expertise in financial risk management and human-centred AI governance to help the sector respond to the opportunities and risks presented by AI,” Professor Davis says.

The AI framework

The AI risk management framework is designed to integrate with existing enterprise risk management processes, rather than replace them. With the flexibility to remain valid as technology evolves, it is grounded in the sector’s regulatory architecture and informed by governance gaps identified by the Actuaries Institute and HTI.

The framework provides practical guidance on how financial services organisations should address four fundamental questions on AI risks:

• Governance: How do we assign accountability for AI risks in our organisation
• Classification: How should we classify AI risks in our organisation?
• Quantification: How might we quantify the risks?
• Controls: What controls are most appropriate for common AI use cases?

The framework includes a toolkit of resources to explain how it can be applied in financial services organisations with significant AI investments. It can also be adapted by smaller organisations, or those earlier in their AI journey, to suit their scale, complexity, and risk appetite.

“AI in this sector can offer significant benefits for institutions and customers alike, improving efficiency, speed, and quality of service. Yet failures in these systems risk significant harm. As experts in data-driven analysis, risk management, and long-term thinking, actuaries are well placed to support financial services organisations with decision making as they embed AI into their operations,” says Actuaries Institute Chief Executive Officer Elayne Grace.

“We’re proud to have worked together to develop this flexible framework that will help financial services organisations of all sizes to safely, responsibly and effectively unlock the benefits of AI to support innovation,” says Ms Grace at a launch event with industry.

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