Check against delivery

Thank you, Mel, for the introduction and thank you to AFIA for the invitation to speak to you today.

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.

In my remarks today I’d like to focus on how ASIC is contributing to national efforts to lift Australia’s productivity — recognising that this is a collective endeavour, and one in which we all have a role to play.

Each of you will be seeking to make productivity enhancements in your own businesses. You are also at the frontline of financing productivity enhancements in many other Australian businesses.

Today, I’ll outline four streams of ASIC work that are contributing to enhanced productivity and explain what we are doing to improve the quality of regulation while maintaining important consumer protections.

In the spirit of the World Cup, I’ve structured my comments around a football (soccer) analogy. We’re all on Team Productivity – with ASIC in goals. This is fitting, because productivity is very much a team sport, but I confess it is a bit of a tortured analogy. So I apologise in advance.

Team productivity: where do regulators play?

The Government has recognised that Australia has a productivity challenge^[1] and has asked all sectors of our economy to contribute to addressing it.

I don’t need to explain to you the critical role the finance sector plays in supporting productivity and economic growth. By providing the finance businesses need to invest in technology, business processes and skills, you are enabling them to innovate, be more productive and compete.

Regulators play an important role too. We do this by implementing regulatory provisions and practices that achieve a strong financial system, fair and efficient markets and confident and informed investors and consumers - all with as little cost as possible.

I frame ASIC’s contribution as being akin to the goalkeeper because we err on the side of being protective and we often take a back seat to the spectacular breakthroughs. We are also instrumental in ensuring our on-field business teammates are well placed to score ‘productivity goals’.

The national challenge to enhance productivity comes at a time when businesses are facing many other risks, including cyber and geopolitical ones, all of which are rapidly evolving, and at times compounding. Artificial intelligence for example has introduced heightened uncertainty with some embracing the opportunities it offers for both consumers and businesses, while other are far more cautious and even fearful.

In circumstances like this, it’s important that regulatory reforms to enhance productivity do not come at the expense of consumers and investors’ trust in our financial system. This is why ASIC has worked to identify productivity-enhancing initiatives that support rather than undermine consumer and investor confidence to participate in the economy.

Playing out from the back: ASIC’s work on simplification

The first productivity initiative I’d like to touch on is our work simplifying the regulatory documents and administrative practices that are within our control. Like a goalkeeper playing out from the box, these choices are within our gift. We can choose how we play the ball.

We’ve used the phrase ‘regulatory simplification’ for this work because our objective is to reduce unnecessary complexity. This makes it easier for businesses to comply with the laws that ASIC administers, and for investors and consumers to know what those laws are. It is not designed to reduce regulatory protections.

ASIC’s regulatory simplification work is very practical and focused on making life easier for businesses - easier to find and understand our regulatory documents and easier to interact with us.

For example:

• We’ve improved our website by restructuring content, removing thousands of obsolete webpages and experimenting with how AI can improve the user experience.
• We’ve facilitated the use of electronic signatures over wet signatures on our forms and we have reduced paper-based processes - 90% of our paper-only forms can now be submitted electronically. This is equivalent of 57,000 paper forms every year.
• We have an ongoing program to simplify our legislative instruments and regulatory guidance.

Our long-term goal is to move away from paper-based, fragmented processes towards a more consistent, secure and user-centric digital services.

This includes our RegistryConnect program which is uplifting and modernising our business registers. Work to improve the search functionality and streamline the online experience for registrations and lodgements is well underway. And work to link director IDs will commence by 1 July 2027, subject to the passage of the relevant Bill which has been passed by the House of Representatives and is before the Senate this week.

Linking with the wing backs: ASIC’s innovation agenda

The second means by which ASIC is contributing to the productivity agenda is through our work supporting innovation in financial products and services. As we have stated publicly before, ASIC wants to be ‘backers, not blockers’ of innovation’.^[2]

We recognise that financial innovation is crucial for productivity, unlocking opportunities not only for start-ups but for existing finance companies.

If we apply my football analogy, our innovation work is a well-timed throw to a wing-back charging up the field.

ASIC’s Innovation Hub which was established over a decade ago has helped around 1,000 fintech and regtech businesses navigate Australia's regulatory system. This includes the creation of a regulatory sandbox in 2015, which was replaced by a statutory sandbox – the Enhanced Regulatory Sandbox - in 2020.

While the sandbox is a valuable tool to test innovative financial services or credit activities without first obtaining an Australian financial services or credit licence, we are aware of some limitations in the way we do this work and are changing it.

We have been actively participating in the Government's independent review of the sandbox. We were pleased this review took an expansive approach to examining how sandboxes and other regulatory actions can support financial innovation, with learnings from our international peers such as Singapore and the UK. Our aim is to improve the pathways from regulatory sandbox to licensing.

Also in the sandbox space, we’ve been a key player in the Reserve Bank’s Project Acacia – which examined how innovations in digital money and settlement infrastructure could support the development of wholesale tokenised asset markets in Australia.

Beyond sandboxes, ASIC recently commissioned research by the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre on specific ideas to cultivate and capitalise on financial innovation in Australia.

Later in June, we are hosting a Financial Markets Innovation roundtable which will bring together senior leaders from across the financial market ecosystem to discuss innovation in our public, listed and traded markets.

This will build on the work that ASIC has been doing to improve the health of Australia’s public and private markets. This work has been directed at ensuring that Australia has capital markets that are attractive, competitive and trusted — so businesses have viable pathways to access funding.

You’ll see from these efforts that ASIC is listening to ideas from industry, consumers and academics and identifying practical changes to our licensing and other practices and the regulations within our gift that make things easier for entities without undermining the trust in the system for investors and consumers.

Here come the mid-fielders: ASIC’s contribution to the Council of Financial Regulators’ regulatory reform

The third stream of work aimed at improving productivity relates to our contribution to the Council of Financial Regulators. ASIC is an active member of the Council of Financial Regulators alongside the Reserve Bank, APRA and Treasury.

In my analogy, which I admit is being stretched at this point, the Council of Financial Regulators are the mid-fielders tasked with maintaining a strong defence, while setting up the forwards to score.

The Treasurer commissioned us as a group to develop a roadmap on better regulation, which was released at the last month’s Budget.

The CFR Plus Better Regulation Roadmap includes over 50 commitments made as part of the Economic Reform Roundtable process, including 15 by ASIC. By streamlining data collection and improving coordination, planning and engagement with industry, it’s estimated that the roadmap commitments could reduce the regulatory burden across the sector by $181 million^[3].

ASIC and APRA jointly led the workstream on improving data sharing and collaboration. The actions resulting from this work respond directly to known industry pain points and has been well received by industry. The actions will free up resources by reducing overlapping requests and uncertainty and allowing licensees to better plan through greater transparency.

A key outcome of the CFR Better Regulation work is strengthened coordination and transparency across regulators. The Regulatory Initiatives Grid, published twice annually by Treasury, supports this by demonstrating how regulators are coordinating and collaborating, including capturing examples of reduced duplication and shared work.

Perfecting the set piece: Law reform and productivity

The fourth and final set of actions I’ll talk about is ASIC’s contribution to the broader work being done in the sphere of law reform and economic analysis.

I think of these as the ‘set pieces’ in my soccer analogy and we’ll be hoping that Tony Popovic has been carefully planning one or two of these for Friday’s game.

Soccer, like business, is typically fluid, fast, and reactive. A set piece, on the other hand, provides an opportunity for a structured moment where the game stops, positions are reset, and teams can execute pre-planned strategies to create a decisive advantage.

You can think of law reform in the same way.

The Government has announced tranches of new legislation that are estimated to improve regulation and reduce compliance costs by $780 million a year^[4].

The reforms most directly relevant to ASIC’s work include the change to financial reporting thresholds, streamlining the mandatory climate reporting framework and reducing the frequency of IDR reporting for small to mid-sized banks.

The other forum where ASIC sees welcome opportunity to improve regulation without undermining protections is the Productivity Commission’s current inquiry into business dynamism.

ASIC recognises that we are well placed to contribute to business dynamism. We have touchpoints across the whole business lifecycle - from company registration and licensing to insolvencies, and we are pleased the Productivity Commission’s work will look across this whole spectrum.

In relation to business exits, ASIC has identified a number of areas of the corporate insolvency system that should be examined in more detail to better promote business dynamism and system integrity.

These include settings relating to simplified liquidation processes, the interaction between insolvency and various legal and business structures, the role of pre-insolvency advice and advisers, and creditor defeating dispositions.

Closing

I’ve spoken today about a wide range of ASIC’s work today that we’ve tried to improve, from those that might affect you on a day-to-day basis – such as accessing our website for regulatory materials or doing your annual business review - to activities that might only affect your business occasionally, such as applying for a licence.

In closing I also wanted to alert you to some upcoming ASIC reports that are specifically in the finance space. These are in relation to car finance, debt management and credit repair and debt collection.

We will be publishing a report on the findings from our recent car finance review very soon.

This report contains some important takeaways for lenders – particularly in relation to costs and ensuring compliance and good practice with distribution oversight. If you’re involved in car finance, I encourage you to use the insights from the report to evaluate your own practices and processes.

In terms of our reviews into debt management and credit repair, and debt collection, you can expect to hear more on those in the coming months.

In conclusion, ASIC has a wide range of initiatives that directly or indirectly contribute to improving productivity. We see our efforts as part of a much bigger team effort to score productivity goals.

The common thread across ASIC’s initiatives is that they seek to improve the quality and efficiency of regulation, without compromising protections to consumers and investors, because these are essential for maintaining confidence and trust in our financial system.

ASIC looks forward to continuing to work with AFIA and all of you to achieve our common goals. Thank you.

^[1] Economic Reform Roundtable agenda

^[2] Open for opportunity: Taking charge of the future of our financial markets

^[3] Budget 2026–27 Fact Sheet

^[4] Ibid