In a speech, Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor Brad Jones said the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Council of Financial Regulators have been working for several years to ensure the Australian financial system can operate through a more shock-prone geopolitical environment. He framed the main risk shift as moving beyond familiar credit, market and liquidity risks to less familiar non-financial threats that could affect the system in complex ways, including attacks on critical infrastructure, disinformation, foreign interference and insider risk, sanctions and sanctions evasion, asset expropriation, and coordination failures across industry and public agencies. Jones said geopolitical fragmentation is most visible in foreign direct investment and in the development of some alternative cross-border payment channels, while reserve asset trends show more continuity than rupture because the USD remains dominant in foreign exchange transactions, reserve portfolios and trade invoicing, and SWIFT remains the backbone of cross-border payments. For industry, he pointed to boards giving geopolitical risk greater weight in risk appetite and strategy, firms building dedicated geopolitical risk capabilities, stronger crisis and recoverability planning, wider scenario exercises, tighter vetting and access controls, and greater sanctions compliance capacity. On payments, he highlighted the industry resilience initiative overseen by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, which is designed to maintain a minimum level of service if a major institution goes dark and includes resilience objectives, response triggers, an industry playbook, technical continuity solutions and scenario testing. Jones said further work is still needed on contingency planning for more extreme scenarios, more demanding fire drills, closer scrutiny of third-party dependencies, and stronger continuity and recoverability arrangements. He added that the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Council of Financial Regulators will continue working with industry on these issues.
Reserve Bank of Australia2026-06-17
Reserve Bank of Australia sets out stronger industry planning for geopolitical shocks and payments resilience
In a speech, the Reserve Bank of Australia said it and the Council of Financial Regulators have been strengthening work on how the financial system would cope with a more adverse geopolitical environment. The focus is on operational and security risks, sanctions preparedness, and payments continuity, including an industry resilience initiative for the payments system. The bank said firms need more robust contingency planning, scenario testing and recoverability arrangements.