MIU - Issue 174 - February 2026

Issue 174 of the Market Integrity Update covers regulatory developments and news affecting markets from December 2025 to February 2026.

New ASIC Chair appointed

ASIC Chair Joe Longo has welcomed the appointment of Sarah Court as the agency’s incoming Chair.

Ms Court has served as ASIC’s Deputy Chair since 2021 and previously held senior statutory appointments across influential and economy-wide economic and corporate regulators for more than 17 years.

Mr Longo said Ms Court would bring deep regulatory expertise to the role from her career of public service.

‘Sarah is an exceptional regulator with a strong record in enforcement that demonstrates her integrity and impact,’ Mr Longo said.

‘Her work as ASIC’s Deputy Chair has been instrumental to the success of the agency’s structural transformation that has strengthened our enforcement posture and work, leading to better outcomes for consumers and a fairer financial system.

‘ASIC will be in very capable hands under her leadership.’

Sarah Court commences as ASIC Chair on 1 June 2026.

Join us at the ASIC Symposium

US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins and 2025 Nobel prize-winning economist Joel Mokyr are among a range of international experts who will address ASIC’s upcoming symposium, ‘The Asia Pacific opportunity – Innovating for growth’ in Sydney on Wednesday 4 March 2026.

Tickets for the ASIC Symposium: The Asia Pacific opportunity – Innovating for growth are available now, which will bring together financial services, markets and technology leaders.

The symposium will follow the Asia-Pacific meetings of IOSCO and with the European Commission, meaning securities regulators from across the world will join other experts including the Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority Verena Ross.

We invite you to be part of the conversation setting the pace for resilient, fair and efficient markets.

Coinciding with ASIC's 35th anniversary, the Symposium is a milestone opportunity to reflect on developments in financial services.

Event details:

When: 2:00 pm - 7:00 pm, Wednesday 4 March 2026

Where: International Convention Centre Sydney, 14 Darling Drive, Sydney NSW 2000

Media can register to attend by emailing media.unit@asic.gov.au.

More information, including event details, is available on ASIC’s website: ASIC Symposium: The Asia Pacific opportunity – Innovating for growth.

Key issues outlook for 2026

ASIC is tracking major shifts across Australia’s financial system as pressures on consumers, markets and businesses intensify.

Economic, technological and structural shifts are expected to shape Australia’s financial system in 2026, cutting across all sectors regulated by ASIC.

To help focus regulatory and industry attention, ASIC has published its Key issues outlook for 2026, highlighting areas where risks are most likely to emerge and where ASIC will prioritise its work to safeguard trust, integrity and confidence in Australia’s financial system.

The issues and risks outlined below are not ranked.

Key issues for 2026 include:

increased retail client exposure to private credit markets
operational failures by superannuation fund trustees resulting in member harm
consumers losing retirement savings through investments in high-risk products, including as a result of high-pressure sales tactics and inappropriate financial advice
advanced technology harming consumers (including agentic AI)
cyber-attacks, data breaches and/or inadequate operational resilience and crisis management undermine market confidence and harm consumers
regulatory gaps related to emerging financial sector participants (digital assets, payments, users of AI) and others on the regulatory perimeter
poor insurance claims handling, particularly following extreme weather events
failure or significant outage resulting from the implementation of CHESS replacement or due to the ongoing use of the aging infrastructure of the current system
poor quality financial reporting, sustainability reporting and audit quality, and
increased risk appetite in the banking sector in response to competitive pressures that results in consumer harm.

For more information and detail on ASIC’s key issues outlook see the ASIC Corporate Plan 2025–26.

ASIC unveils package of ASX reforms

In mid-December 2025, ASIC obtained commitments from ASX Group (ASX) on a package of reforms including:

strengthening the independence and governance of ASX’s Clearing and Settlement Facilities Boards
a strategic reset of ASX’s transformation program ‘Accelerate’, with clear milestones and accountability for delivery
the imposition of an additional $150 million capital charge on ASX Limited to ensure ASX maintains robust financial resources until remediation is complete, and
a commitment to stronger leadership.

In addition, ASIC and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) have stepped up their review to uplift their joint supervisory model.

The package will strengthen confidence in ASX and Australia’s critical market infrastructure, provide certainty about the market operator’s reset and respond to an interim report released by the panel of the Inquiry into the ASX Group (25-303MR).

The Inquiry into ASX, announced in June 2025 and led by an expert panel, identified shortcomings in ASX’s governance, capability, risk management and culture that required urgent attention and response. Due to the urgency of the reset required, the insights of the Report were shared with ASIC, and ASIC engaged with ASX.

The Inquiry’s interim report found that, while some progress has been made, the scale of transformation required is significant and cannot be achieved through current tactical, incremental measures or business as usual.

In response to the issues raised by the Panel, ASIC proposed and ASX agreed to a series of actions, detailed in an ASIC and ASX letter (25-303MR).

The Final Report of the Inquiry is due to be delivered to ASIC by 31 March 2026.

You can read more about the transformational package in the supporting media release (25-303MR).

CFD sector review delivers industry change and nearly $40 million in investor refunds

ASIC has secured the return of nearly $40 million to more than 38,000 retail investors and driven substantial compliance improvement across Australia’s contracts for difference (CFD) sector following a 15-month whole of industry review.

ASIC’s new report, Risky business: Driving change in CFD issuers’ distribution practices (REP 828), found widespread weaknesses in how CFD issuers complied with their design and distribution obligations, ASIC’s CFD product intervention order (PIO) and regulatory reporting requirements (22-082MR).

ASIC found that more than half the CFD sector had contravened the PIO by offering ‘margin discounts’ to retail clients who took on opposing long and short positions. These investors incurred higher funding costs but could not profit from their opposing CFD positions.

In December 2025, ASIC also issued an interim stop order against Stratos Trading Pty Ltd (trading as FXCM) after the issuer failed to respond to concerns regarding deficiencies in its target market determination (TMD) (25-295MR). The stop order was revoked after FXCM amended its TMD to address ASIC’s concerns.

Driving improved practices

As a result of ASIC’s intervention:

39 issuers made changes to their target markets
46 issuers improved website content, with one issuer amending almost 1,000 webpages
44 issuers improved their client onboarding questionnaires, with many issuers making substantial changes
42 issuers implemented new processes for ongoing monitoring of client trading outcomes and behaviours, or made significant improvements to existing processes
48 issuers implemented changes to comply with their over-the-counter derivative transaction reporting requirements, after the review identified over 70 million erroneous reports, and
reportable situations lodged by issuers increased by 127% compared to the previous year, reflecting greater compliance awareness and responsiveness.

Driving better outcomes for consumers of financial products and services, including high-risk products, such as CFDs, is one of ASIC’s 2025–26 priorities for supervising market intermediaries.

For more information about ASIC’s latest CFD review, read REP 828 and the supporting media release (26-004MR).

License conditions imposed on Corpay subsidiary

ASIC has imposed additional licence conditions on the Australian financial services (AFS) licence of Cambridge Mercantile (Australia) Pty Ltd (Cambridge), a subsidiary of Corpay Inc., following ongoing compliance failures in its foreign exchange (FX) derivatives business.

ASIC’s action comes after raising concerns that Cambridge:

misclassified more than 2,800 retail clients as wholesale clients, and failed to maintain adequate systems, record keeping and monitoring procedures for classification of clients
did not promptly remediate affected clients, with amounts expected to total millions of dollars
failed to maintain adequate arrangements to manage conflicts of interest, including relating to Cambridge representatives’ remuneration arrangements
failed to maintain adequate risk management systems and adequate human resources to carry out supervision, compliance and risk management functions, and
breached its financial resource requirements.

Australian small business owners managing their FX exposures in volatile times expect AFS licensees to treat them fairly and to afford them important statutory consumer protections they are owed.

The additional licence conditions will require Cambridge to:

prepare a comprehensive remediation plan to address the compliance failures and remediate the misclassified clients
appoint an independent expert to report on the adequacy of Cambridge’s remediation plan, including its client remediation, and
have the independent expert assess the operational effectiveness of Cambridge’s remediation activities to prevent similar issues in the future.

AFS licensees must not profit from their compliance failures and consumer remediations should be initiated and conducted promptly.

Cambridge cooperated with ASIC and consented to the imposition of the additional licence conditions.

ASIC improves and simplifies technological and operational resilience guidance

In December, ASIC released a series of updates to improve and simplify its regulatory guidance on complying with technological and operational resilience rules for market participants and market operators.

The updates mark the third stage of ASIC’s work to review and clarify guidance relating to Chapters 8A and 8B of the ASIC Market Integrity Rules (Securities Markets) 2017 and the ASIC Market Integrity Rules (Futures Markets) 2017 (Resilience Rules) set out in:

Regulatory Guide 265 Guidance on ASIC market integrity rules for participants of securities markets (RG 265)
Regulatory Guide 266 Guidance on ASIC market integrity rules for participants of futures markets (RG 266), and
Regulatory Guide 172 Financial markets: Domestic and overseas operators (RG 172).

The updates align with ASIC’s commitment to regulatory simplification and include changes to reduce repetition and the length of guidance, as well as structural improvements. Further, the updates:

incorporate guidance on arrangements for identifying critical business services previously shared in September 2024 in a letter to participants
give certainty that critical business services arrangements may leverage existing resilience frameworks, including service provider’s business continuity plans and redundancy arrangements for outsourcing arrangements, where suitable
confirm that, in some situations, full redundancy arrangements may not be required for all critical business services
clarify thresholds for identifying and reporting major events to ASIC, and
remove references to superseded APRA standards and guidance.

The updates also incorporate class waivers ASIC granted in August 2025 to provide relief from some requirements for outsourcing arrangements where supply of energy or communications services were identified as critical business services.

Exemptions finalised for stablecoins and wrapped tokens

Late last year, ASIC finalised new measures to further support innovation and growth in Australia’s digital assets and payment sectors, by granting class relief for intermediaries trading or engaging in the secondary distribution of certain stablecoins and wrapped tokens.

ASIC has also granted relief permitting the holding of digital assets that are financial products in omnibus accounts, subject to appropriate record‑keeping and reconciliation procedures.

The relief smooths the transition to the Government’s proposed Digital Asset Platform and payment regimes, foreshadowed when ASIC updated its digital asset guidance in INFO 225 in October 2025 (25-250MR).

The finalised instruments provide increased certainty on licence requirements and custody arrangements for eligible activities, supporting ASIC’s broader strategic objective of facilitating responsible innovation in Australia’s financial markets.

For more information download:

Changes to information available through ASIC website

ASIC has removed residential addresses of company officeholders from company extracts purchased via its website, in response to privacy and safety concerns and to reduce the risk of identity theft and crime.

This change is a sensible precaution that balances the need to reduce easily accessible personal information while maintaining effective and transparent registers.

This action does not remove residential address information entirely but introduces a barrier at the most widely available access point.

Law enforcement agencies, government departments and those who require address details for regulatory compliance and business purposes will still have access to this information.

ASIC will work with registry intermediaries to support the transition and monitor impacts on users.

Customers accessing ASIC registers via the website can visit Company and organisation registers for more information.

For more information, read the supporting news item (ASIC updates information available through purchased extracts).

Enforcement outcomes

Over the last three months, ASIC has achieved the following enforcement outcomes:

FIIG Securities ordered to pay $2.5 million over cyber security failures (26-021MR)
ASIC cancels AFS licence of Pulse Markets for serious and sustained breaches of duties (26-027MR)
Petra Capital fined for regulatory data reporting failures (26-015MR)
Brendan Gunn pleads guilty to dealing with money reasonably suspected of being proceeds of crime (26-009MR)
BPS Financial to pay $14 million in penalties over crypto Qoin Wallet (26-008MR)
Fund manager sentenced to 6 years’ jail in $3 million Platinum Asset Management insider trading case (26-007MR)
Federal Court orders $250 million combined penalties against ANZ (25-314MR)
Market riggers sentenced in ASX ‘pump and dump’ case (25-315MR)
Macquarie Securities admits to misleading conduct and agrees to pay $35 million for systemic failures (25-311MR), and
Victorian man sentenced in market manipulation case (25-302MR).