As outlined in ASIC’s Corporate Plan 2022-26, ASIC is committed to work on development of an innovative solution to identify and assess poor market disclosure by listed companies.

As part of the Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII) Regulatory Technology (RegTech) Round, ASIC is excited to work with Eastern Analytica Pty Ltd (trading as DHI-AI PTY LTD) to develop a proof of concept for using technology to help identify and assess poor market disclosure by listed companies.

The successful grant of almost $1 million for Eastern Analytica was announced by the Minister for Industry and Science, the Hon Ed Husic MP.

BRII is a government program sponsored by the Department of Industry, Science, and Resources (DISR).

ASIC’s RegTech challenge

The BRII RegTech Round aims to assess the potential of regtech to solve challenges across government agencies and departments to assist with easier compliance and service delivery.

ASIC’s challenge explores the potential of using technology to help identify and assess poor market disclosure by listed companies, this is an important initiative which forms part of ASIC’s Digital and Data agenda.

Eastern Analytica will be tasked with developing a technology solution to help ASIC analyse corporate disclosures. The solution will aim to identify and assess compliance by listed companies with the following requirements:

• 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.

Eastern Analytica will develop their proposed solution over a period up to 15 months.

This proof of concept stage of the BRII RegTech Round follows an earlier stage where grants of up to $100,000 were provided to five regtech entities to conduct a feasibility study in response to ASIC’s market disclosure challenge for a period of three months (see 22-005MR).

Visit ASIC’s BRII RegTech Round webpage for more information on the program.

ASIC’s Innovation Hub offers informal assistance to eligible Australian regtech startups and scaleups to help navigate the regulatory framework.

ASIC is Australia’s corporate, markets and financial services regulator.