ASIC chair Joe Longo (pictured) has signalled a more supportive regulatory stance on fintech and advice innovation, telling an Asia‑Pacific audience that the regulator wants to help new models move from experimentation to fully licensed operations.
ASIC “supports open, robust, and competitive markets – where new innovations can compete for market share,” Longo said, stressing that the regulator “wants to be backers, not blockers, of financial innovation.”
He pointed to a key pain point for start‑ups and emerging advice tools – the jump from the regulatory sandbox into the mainstream licensing regime.
“In the last five years, very few sandbox participants have successfully made this transition. What happens is many get to the end of the testing period and face a cliff: full licence or stop operating. There’s no in between,” Longo said.
Using the example of an AI‑driven financial advice tool, Longo outlined a potential model where ASIC assigns a case manager from day one and engages a year before testing ends to plan an “exit strategy” – whether that’s applying for a licence, joining an existing licensee, or winding down.
“We think that this is a model that would better help manage the cliff that many start-ups face,” he said.
For mortgage brokers, the message is that ASIC expects more digital and AI‑driven tools to emerge – and wants those tools to have a realistic pathway into licensed, compliant use.
Longo also highlighted ASIC’s work on tokenised markets and digital assets, including its role in the Reserve Bank’s Project Acacia and licensing of tokenised trading platforms.
“Tokenisation is a significant evolution in financial market infrastructure, with great potential, but we don’t yet know how well it performs at scale against other models,” he said.
Longo stressed that “tokenisation at scale will require the cooperation and coordinated efforts of buy and sell side participants, market infrastructure and service providers, and policy-makers and regulators. This is definitely a team sport.”
While these developments sit in wholesale markets, they ultimately affect how credit is funded – and therefore the products and pricing available to borrowers over time.
Longo rejected the idea that regulation should simply preserve the status quo. He argued that “regulation can be an enabler,” pointing to ASIC’s moves to clarify how existing law applies to digital assets and to commission research on barriers to tokenisation.
“We need fresh thinking. We need smart risk-taking. We need collaboration across the private and public sector, and for boards and executives to play a strong role in driving innovation,” he said.
For broker groups, aggregators and lenders, that means ASIC is looking for leadership that backs new technology – including AI‑enabled tools – while staying firmly within the evolving regulatory framework.
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