Check against delivery

Acknowledgements

I too would like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and paying my respects to elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people present today.

In particular, I would also acknowledge my fellow ASIC commissioner Kate O’Rourke, who is with us today. Kate’s doing a lot of work in this space that you’re all interested in. So, if I were all of you, I’d be talking to Kate because I’m not going to be around [inaudible].

Introduction

But first, I want to thank the Tech Council and Block for hosting us today.

A bit of history. Hero of Alexandria might be considered history’s unluckiest inventor.

If he was born in another era, he might have been remembered alongside the great industrialists.

He created steam-powered machines nearly 1,800 years before steam transformed the world. He experimented with wild wind-powered devices long before wind energy became the wind industry.

However, his ‘curious inventions remained mere curiosities’.^[1]

His tale is recounted in Andrew Leigh’s latest book, The Shortest History of Innovation. I’ve no idea how Dr Leigh finds time to write books. But I can also recommend his Shortest History of Economics. Now he’s managed to write a book about innovation as well.

[It reminds me that innovation isn’t just about ingenuity.] It requires investment, institutions, and ultimately, an inflection point, if it is to achieve its potential.

Today we are launching new research which shows innovation is now impacting nearly every part of the global financial sector.^[2]

AI, automation, and digital platforms are fundamentally reshaping how our financial system operates.

And as these technological changes accelerate, Australia’s challenge is not simply to keep up. We have to be ahead of the game.

A laboratory of innovation

Fortunately, I believe we have the right stuff to do so.

We are the nation that brought the world Wi-Fi. Polymer bank notes. The bionic ear.

Buy-now-pay-later was pioneered right here in Australia by Afterpay. Indeed, we are standing in Block’s headquarters right now, in part, because they recognised that ingenuity.

And our New Payments Platform (NPP) and PayTo infrastructure are world-class, with more than 1.82 billion real-time payments made in 2025 alone.^[3]

So, we know a lot about ingenuity in this country.

But what about investment?

A headline in The Economist recently caught my eye – ’Australia’s startup scene is thriving at last’.^[4]

It claimed that for every $1 billion of VC money invested since 2000, Australia has produced 1.22 unicorns – a higher ratio than any other country, according to The Economist, and nearly twice the figure for America, which I found pretty extraordinary.

But ingenuity and investment alone aren’t enough. We also need institutions for innovation to succeed. That’s where we come in.

I’ve said before that I want ASIC to be backers, not blockers, of financial innovation. An approach I hope that has been welcome to many of you.

It’s why we’ve been a key part of the Reserve Bank’s Project Acacia – and why we have committed to continuing to work with the RBA and the other COFR [Council of Financial Regulators] agencies on a potential digital financial market infrastructure sandbox (DFMI sandbox).

It’s why we are exploring how we can better support start-ups with pathways from regulatory sandbox to licensing.^[5]

And it’s why we are hosting a Financial Markets Innovation roundtable, and publishing further research on capital market innovation and tokenisation in June.

So, Australia has the ingenuity, the investment, and the institutions required for innovation to succeed. We just need the right inflection point.

The risk of falling behind

This brings me to what I think is a crucial point.

Technology is moving faster than any of us can comprehend – although I have to say, there are people in this room whose level of comprehension is pretty good – and if we miss the boat, there is a real risk that we will fall behind.

And while Australia is a leader now in terms of buy-now-pay-later regulation and real-time payments infrastructure, we lag in other areas – a gap that will only widen if we don’t act. And other nations stand poised to reap the benefits.

For example, in the United States, insurtech company Lemonade [inaudible] uses machine-learning models to automatically process claims in under three seconds.^[6]

In Australia, there has been a surge in complaints about motor vehicle insurance due to claims handling delays.^[7] Imagine how such technology could improve claims handling times following the next hailstorm – with the appropriate safeguards, of course.

Or consider Betterment, a robo-advisory platform that provides automated advice at a fraction of the cost of traditional advice.^[8]

We know demographic shifts are driving increased demand for advice in Australia. Maintaining today’s advice coverage would require adviser numbers to more than double by 2055.^[9]

But we know many more people would benefit from advice if they could access it in a cost-effective way. For the first time in a long time, there is a technology that has the potential to offer that.

We are in a global innovation race. If we do not embrace new market technologies now, we could be poorer for it as a nation in the future. We may well end up with a ‘lost generation’ of Australians, consigned to a poorer standard of living because we did not act upon these opportunities.

That’s not a future I want. It’s not a future I want for my grandchildren. And I don’t think any of us do either.

So, what’s it going to take?

First, we need good regulation.

Our research clearly shows that good regulation – regulation that focuses less on a prescriptive approach to specific technologies and more on key principles of accountability and oversight – can support innovation.

That means we need a principles-based regulatory framework that allows innovation to occur, while maintaining high governance and conduct standards.

For the past 18 months, ASIC has pushed for clearer regulation through our regulatory simplification initiative. We are certainly not done here. This remains a key priority for ASIC, and I hope for the country, to do something about regulatory complexity.

Next, we must all foster a culture that backs innovation.

A single stand out doesn't build an economy. That means we need fresh thinking and innovative ideas from all market participants.

However, recent experience tells us that some market participants are scared to try something new.

ASIC’s recent tokenisation survey was one example of this – around half the market declined to take part or even meet with us, and only one third provided detailed feedback.^[10]

We cannot let complacency chart our future. That is why we must continue to work together to break down barriers around innovation. This challenge is bigger than any of us alone can tackle.

We all need to work together to progress innovation in financial services and markets – and we stand ready to do our part of doing that.

Conclusion

Hero of Alexandria might be history’s unluckiest inventor, but we don’t want to become known as the ‘unlucky country’.

Australia has the right stuff to become a leader in financial innovation, but only if we seize the moment – and work together to do it.

Thanks for your attention.

^[1] Andrew Leigh, The Shortest History of Innovation (Black Inc, 2026), pg. 39.

^[2] Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, Innovation in Financial Technology and RegTech: A Landscape Review (April 2026).

^[3] Reserve Bank of Australia, New Payments Platform Statistics (2025). Includes Osko and PayTo transactions.

^[4] The Economist, ‘Australia’s Startup Scene Is Thriving at Last: Can the Lucky Country Recreate Silicon Valley Down Under?’ (16 April 2026) The Economist <https://www.economist.com/business/2026/04/16/australias-startup-scene-is-thriving-at-last>

^[5] Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ‘Shaping a Stronger Future for the Asia‑Pacific’ (Speech, ASIC, <https://www.asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/speeches/shaping-a-stronger-future-for-the-asia-pacific/>)

^[6] Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, Innovation in Financial Technology and RegTech: A Landscape Review (April 2026), pg. 18.

Insurtech is short for insurance technology and refers to the use of innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, blockchain, and machine learning, to improve and automate the traditional insurance industry.

^[7] Insurance News, ‘Motor to fore as AFCA complaints surge’ (Article, 2 March 2026) <https://www.insurancenews.com.au/local/motor-to-fore-as-afca-complaints-surge>.

^[8] Ibid, pg. 24

^[9] Absent any material productivity improvements or alternative delivery models.

Adviser Ratings, 2025 Australian Financial Advice Landscape Report (Report, 2025), pg. 167 <https://www.adviserratings.com.au/news/2025-australian-financial-advice-landscape-report/>

^[10] Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ‘Open for Opportunity: Taking Charge of the Future of Our Financial Markets’ (Speech, ASIC, <https://www.asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/speeches/open-for-opportunity-taking-charge-of-the-future-of-our-financial-markets/>)