Reserve Bank of Australia flags major operational and governance gaps in ASX clearing and settlement facilities assessment

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) published its 2025 Assessment of the ASX Clearing and Settlement (CS) Facilities against the Bank’s Financial Stability Standards, concluding that ASX is not currently meeting regulators’ expectations for an operator of critical market infrastructure. The assessment points to recent shortcomings in risk management, particularly the December 2024 CHESS batch settlement incident, and calls for foundational changes to governance, culture and risk management processes. Many individual Standards were rated ‘observed’ or ‘broadly observed’, but at least one CS facility was assessed as ‘partly observed’ on requirements covering the Framework for Comprehensive Management of Risks, Governance, Credit Risk, Settlement Finality and Operational Risk. ASX Clear and ASX Settlement were again rated ‘not observed’ on the Operational Risk Standard, following an out-of-cycle assessment in March 2025. The RBA issued recommendations including obtaining assurance that gaps in the risk appetite statement and strategy to return to risk appetite have been addressed, ensuring the risk transformation plan is appropriately resourced with regular reporting, reviewing business continuity and contingency arrangements across the CS facilities, and improving data and reporting controls for financial risk models. The RBA said it will closely monitor progress over the coming year, expects meaningful improvement while ASX also meets key milestones for major technology projects, and will consider further regulatory responses if necessary.