The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) today published guidance asking market operators and participants to continue to implement resilient measures to tackle equity market outages.
The regulator even wants market players to facilitating trading and offer services on alternative markets during unforeseen circumstances such as outages.
ASIC Commissioner Danielle Press said:
While progress has been reasonable given the industry is balancing other significant market system changes and volatile trading conditions, there is considerably more to do.
The regulator released a consultation paper earlier to explain how the market participants could respond during an outage.
ASIC is eager to tackle market outages in response to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) equity market outage in November 2020 following a major technical upgrade.
ASIC’s latest concerns of market outages come with several important updates in the industry, including the replacement of CHESS, Cboe’s technology upgrade and the implementation of new market integrity rules. Cboe plans to implement new technology in February 2023
The regulator calling on market operators and participants to implement all these upgrades in a ‘reasonable timeframe’.
Press added:
By early to mid-2023, we anticipate that all market participants will have arrangements for at least new orders to trade on an alternative market during an outage, and that market operators will support this outcome.
Meanwhile, ASIC wants regulated financial market participants to have adequate cybersecurity measures in place as part of their license obligations even though it is not part of the Australia Financial Services (AFS) license requirements.
