Australian Securities & Investments Commission simplifies technological and operational resilience guidance for market participants and operators

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has issued updated guidance to help market participants and market operators comply with the technological and operational resilience requirements in the ASIC Market Integrity Rules for securities and futures markets. The changes update Regulatory Guides 265, 266 and 172 and form the third stage of ASIC’s review and clarification of its guidance on the Resilience Rules. The revised guidance reduces repetition and shortens and restructures content, while incorporating earlier guidance on identifying critical business services. It also confirms that critical business services arrangements may leverage existing resilience frameworks, including service providers’ business continuity plans and redundancy arrangements for outsourcing where suitable, and that full redundancy may not be required for all critical business services in some situations. In addition, ASIC has clarified thresholds for identifying and reporting major events, removed references to superseded Australian Prudential Regulation Authority standards and incorporated the class waivers granted in August 2025 that provide relief from certain outsourcing requirements where energy or communications services are treated as critical business services. ASIC also flagged further work on financial market infrastructure reforms, including consultation on updated guidance in 2026.