On 18 December 2025, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) published updates to its guidance on Chapters 8A and 8B of the ASIC Market Integrity Rules (Securities Markets) 2017 and the ASIC Market Integrity Rules (Futures Markets) 2017 (together, the Resilience Rules). The updates are reflected in the following regulatory guides:
- Regulatory Guide 265: Guidance on ASIC market integrity rules for participants of securities markets.
- Regulatory Guide 266: Guidance on ASIC market integrity rules for participants of futures markets.
- Regulatory Guide 172: Financial markets—Domestic and overseas operators.
These changes are intended to improve and simplify guidance on complying with the Resilience Rules and form part of ASIC’s broader regulatory simplification initiative.
The updates do the following:
- Incorporate guidance on arrangements for identifying critical business services that ASIC previously communicated to participants in September 2024.
- Provide assurance that arrangements for critical business services may leverage existing resilience frameworks—such as service providers’ business continuity plans; and redundancy measures for outsourcing arrangements—where appropriate.
- Confirm that full redundancy may not be required for all critical business services in every circumstance.
- Clarify the thresholds for identifying and reporting major events to ASIC.
- Remove references to superseded APRA standards and guidance.
In addition, the updates incorporate class waivers issued by ASIC in August 2025 that provide relief from certain outsourcing requirements where the supply of energy or communications services is identified as a critical business service.