The Australian Securities & Investments Commission is gathering market and financial services leaders for a roundtable and has published a commissioned report on innovation in financial markets and financial market infrastructure that argues Australia needs to move quickly to remain competitive. The report, prepared by the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, says technological change is making markets more automated, shortening settlement cycles, extending trading hours and enabling new market models, while other jurisdictions are already adjusting their frameworks for distributed ledger technology, tokenised assets, artificial intelligence and broader information technology upgrades. ASIC is positioning the roundtable as the next step in its work on public and private market dynamism and on modernising market infrastructure. It is focused on practical measures to strengthen capital markets by improving capital and operational efficiency, supporting automated surveillance and cross-regulator coordination, and giving firms clearer pathways to test and operationalise new products with regulatory support. The report also highlights risks that need to be managed alongside innovation, including concentration risk from external service providers, higher retail risk in gamified and social trading, and the need to maintain resilience standards as frontier AI and cyber risk develop. ASIC will publish a summary of the themes and practical actions from the roundtable, with discussions centred on priority opportunities for innovation that can support safe growth.

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