ASIC will be working with five regulatory technology (regtech) entities – Bedrock AI Aus Pty Ltd, DigitalX Limited, Eastern Analytica Pty Ltd, Listcorp Pty Ltd and Pyxta Pty Ltd for the Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII) Regulatory Technology (Regtech) Round, dealing with the challenges of corporate disclosure.

Initiated by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources and announced today, this latest BRII round assesses the potential of regtech to solve challenges across government agencies and departments. ASIC’s selected challenge explores the potential of using technology to help identify and assess poor market disclosure by listed companies.

Grants of up to $100,000 are provided to each of the five successful small-to-medium regtech enterprises (SMEs) to conduct a feasibility study in response to the corporate disclosure challenge during a period of about three months. ASIC will work with the five successful regtech firms throughout the feasibility study stage.

In the next stage of the BRII Regtech Round, two of these regtechs may receive further grants of up to $1 million each to develop and test a proof of concept over a further 15 months.

‘ASIC deliberately designed a challenge around market disclosure that is a representative problem so that potential regtech solutions can also be applied to other problem use cases by agencies and industry.

‘Working towards an innovative solution has the potential to transform ASIC’s ability to harness technology to reduce regulatory burden, while enhancing market integrity,’ said ASIC Commissioner Cathie Armour.

ASIC’s BRII challenge to applicants focuses on developing a technology solution to help ASIC analyse corporate disclosures, and other datasets, to identify and assess compliance by listed companies with a range of requirements, including:

• continuous disclosure (price sensitive disclosure) and other disclosure obligations to the market;
• financial reporting obligations;
• the prohibition against misleading or deceptive disclosure (such as misleading categorisation of market announcements); and
• the prohibition against practices that manipulate the pricing of securities.

To find out more information, including details regarding the grants, factsheets for all agency challenges, and the selected grantees, visit Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII) – RegTech Round.

Background

ASIC is one of four government agencies selected under the BRII Regtech Round to deliver a challenge for SMEs to tackle. ASIC’s BRII challenge seeks to use technology to help identify and assess poor market disclosure by listed companies.

ASIC continues to facilitate innovative businesses and advancements in technology that are beneficial to consumers, investors and markets. Aligned to ASIC’s Corporate Plan 2021-25, ASIC commits to promote the application of regtech to deliver better regulatory compliance and consumer outcomes.

REP 685 ASIC’s regtech initiatives 2019–20 and REP 653 ASIC's regtech initiatives 2018–19 summarise the regtech initiatives and events conducted in FY2018-20.

ASIC’s Innovation Hub offers informal assistance to eligible Australian regtech startups and scaleups to help develop their products and services.