In this episode, Amy-Rose is joined by Dr Rhys Bollen to explore the role of regulation in building trusted, resilient and future-ready digital financial markets. The conversation examines how supervision evolves when finance becomes software, markets operate around the clock, and digital assets move from the edge of the system toward the centre.
Dr Rhys Bollen is Senior Executive Leader, Digital Assets at Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), where he leads the team overseeing crypto and digital asset firms and preparing for the Government’s proposed law reforms in this area. He is also responsible for ASIC’s broader work across digital finance, innovation and tokenisation, including ASIC’s regulatory sandbox.
With more than 25 years of experience across regulation, policy and financial services, Rhys has held senior leadership roles spanning market supervision, banking, insurance, investment management and strategic policy. His work focuses on balancing innovation with market integrity, consumer protection and confidence in Australia’s evolving financial system.
The discussion unpacks why markets require clear rules and active oversight, particularly as new technologies increase speed and complexity. It explores how digital assets and tokenisation are reshaping financial infrastructure, where innovation is delivering real value across payments, investment and capital markets, and where risks continue to emerge through poor governance, disclosure and market behaviour.
The episode also examines ASIC’s approach to supporting innovation through tools such as the regulatory sandbox, the growing role of AI across financial services, and how regulators are adapting their own capabilities to keep pace with technological change.
Looking ahead, the conversation focuses on Australia’s opportunity to lead in digital finance, and the importance of moving beyond the technology itself to delivering better products, services and outcomes for end users across the economy.
A special thank you to Independent Reserve for hosting this episode in their studio. Their support in providing this space makes conversations like this possible, and reflects their ongoing contribution to the growth and maturity of Australia’s digital economy.
speaker-1: It is perfect timing.
speaker-0: So today we’re going to be talking about digital infrastructure around how Australia is, I guess, one foot in digital, one foot in physical. You have been in financial markets in the past, more recently in digital assets. However, if we go back in time and we look you up on the internet, we know you’ve had an interest in digital assets for many years. there any key differences between traditional financial markets in comparison to digital assets? Some high level sort of things that you’ve seen.
speaker-1: Indeed. Yeah, so have been ⁓ in this area one way or another for about 30 years. So banking and finance lawyer and then ASIC and other regulators for a while. So this space is both familiar and different. are… Most of the financial markets are digital to some extent. There’s not a lot of trading of paper certificates and things nowadays. So it’s probably on a spectrum rather than binary, I think. But we are slowly seeing more and more of the financial system be digitised and then be digitised on newer rails and then newer rails again and then newer rails again. So you can see that in payments, in banking, in credit insurance, investment products and digital assets. And the broader use of DLT is a further step along that chain. I don’t think it’s a ⁓ a clear kind of binary situation here, but it’s an incremental improvement in technology, an incremental improvement in infrastructure and rails.
speaker-0: And so you mentioned that the majority of the infrastructure and ⁓ financial services, it’s digital now. We’re also seeing innovation happen at speed. then traditionally, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but the regulatory reform and the process is a bit slower than innovation. Would you have any thoughts on that?
speaker-1: i look i think that’s right we do our best to ⁓ set regimes up, rules, regulations, guides, to accommodate the future, but we can’t predict it. no, we set up the regime, which is now Chapter 7, about 25 years ago. I think they did fairly well to set something up which was broad. I think they did fairly well to set something up which was as technology neutral as they could be at the time. And look, it served us pretty well. It’s being updated just now, as you know. ⁓ And… We will work with that, but the regime ⁓ is always going to be our best guess of setting it up for the future without knowing exactly what the future holds.
speaker-0: And how do you balance that speed of innovation with reform and regulation? Is there a certain…
speaker-1: Look, ⁓ it is something that we monitor. is something that we continue to adapt as we go. Innovation ⁓ inside the agency is part of it as well. So we need to be ⁓ as current as we can be with the technology we’re using, constantly doing research, constantly mixing with colleagues in other regulators and in the industry as well. So we’re aware. But we also need to understand that ⁓ our regime will always be ⁓ a tiny bit behind what the latest technology is. And I don’t think you would expect us to ⁓ tell you in advance where the technology would go. You don’t usually expect that of the regulator. You expect us to be responding appropriately rather than announcing in advance where the technology is going to go next.
speaker-0: And if we take it back to first principles, I guess, because I got a bit heavy at the beginning, why do financial markets need regulation?
speaker-1: Thank If I can use a sporting analogy, so just like a professional code needs rules and a numpy to have a coherent game with a level playing field and a meaningful competition of people reaching their potential, markets do as well. So markets don’t function well without rules. Markets don’t function well without numpy. That is true for most markets, whether it’s markets for commodities, whether it’s markets for electricity or markets for financial products and services. So we are part of the infrastructure as much as the ⁓ the physical infrastructure is, we’re part of the infrastructure of how markets work well.
speaker-0: And when these markets are working well, it seems they’re also quite global and interactive. that?
speaker-1: Yes, and more so over time, it looks like.
speaker-0: Is that, ⁓ there’s a regulatory family, there’s a good network of regulators ⁓ that come together and understand each other’s jurisdictions and learn from each other. But does that globalisation and the various regulatory ⁓ regimes, does it make it easier or harder having that globalisation or is it, would it be much easier if it was all just in Australia?
speaker-1: I don’t think that’s the reality that the world presents to us. Australia has always been a small part of global markets and has always been a connected economy. We’ve always been an open economy. We’ve always been a trading nation. I can’t see that changing anytime soon. So global markets have always been part of our story. It is faster now with digitised products and services and high speed communications and globally active firms. ⁓ But that’s always been part of the story.
speaker-0: Can tell me a little bit, and you can edit this later, but can you tell me about how you do interact with those international regulatory stakeholders, the regulatory family?
speaker-1: Yes, of course. So policymakers and regulators interact with their counterparts, their colleagues pretty regularly, probably in the same way that a lot of you do with your counterparts in the legal profession or the accounting profession or the developer community, the tech community. So we have committees, we have standard setting groups, we have conferences that we attend as well as industry conferences where we join all of you. We have Regulator groups, we have working groups on particular topics of the day, not unlike the way that you’re set up, Amy Rose, in your organisation as well. So we have similar sorts of concepts. I’m part of a FinTech committee of regulators. We have others who specialise more on the product or service lines, like on derivatives or securities or financial market infrastructure. ⁓ We strive for consistency as much as we can. It’s not gonna be harmonised, that’s not realistic. We all work ⁓ for a national government or a local authority. of one sort or another and we’re answerable to the parliament and the voters in that country. But we strive for as much consistency as we can, both in the rules and how we administer them.
speaker-0: So our industry is often pushing for, I guess, the freedom to innovate. But when it comes to where you sit, how does your view of innovation differ or does it differ? What’s happening within ASIC and innovation that you think would be important to the industry to understand?
speaker-1: Yeah, so we have a innovation team at ASIC, as you know, Amy Rose, have a team who is on the other end of the phone when people have got queries, trying to understand how to navigate the system. Do I need license or not? What sort? Where do I start? Who do I talk to? We participate in as many gatherings of practitioners and industry as we can in that team. And we run sandboxes and other pilot projects and things like that. So that’s one part of our innovation work. Another part is doing our regular industry, well, we think supports innovation. So markets want certainty, markets want predictability, markets want a level playing field so they can compete on their merits with each other. Nobody wants to be undercut by someone who is cutting corners and things like that. So our system, if we do it well, supports innovators because they can compete on their merits and if their product is faster, cheaper, better, more attractive, then they will win market share. ⁓ robust marketplace where people can compete and compete vigorously and compete enthusiastically and innovations will then ⁓ succeed on their merits and we’re not about picking winners in that space but we want to be as facilitative as we can be and occasionally that means people come to us with a product or a service that doesn’t completely fit in the existing regime and we can work with that. Parliament has given us a range of powers to make adjustments to the rules if we need be. for some product that wasn’t for sale.
speaker-0: Are you seeing any corners of the, of the, actually your scope is broad. It’s not just digital assets. You’re a financial services regulator. Are you seeing any innovation that is bringing real value to the Australian economy?
speaker-1: . We see ⁓ good and bad innovation regularly. you have heard in our chairs recent speeches, innovation, beneficial innovation is what we want to encourage. We want encourage those innovations which make people’s lives better. ⁓ Whether they be business owners or households that make payments quicker, faster, cheaper, that make it easier to invest, that make it easier to manage the risks that your household face in terms of insurances or whatever might be. And so we’re seeing innovation across that spectrum. We’re seeing product innovation, new products that enable people to manage their superannuation into their retirement years. We’re seeing innovations around payments, allow people to pay money to relatives overseas faster and quicker and cheaper than it ever used to be. We’re seeing innovations in the investment space where you saw we talked about the recent DFCRC research recently, Amy Rose and their research shows that we could make financial markets, the traditional financial markets, whole lot more efficient with some of these innovations and that would benefit investors generally. So we’re trying to support any innovation that is going to benefit the end user.
speaker-0: And I think that’s exciting as well. heard Joe Longo’s speech and it was quite refreshing with the emphasis on innovation and ⁓ enabling Australia. So I’m gonna move now to… Where you see, if we’re talking about innovation, is there an opportunity for Australia right now? We’ve got fairly clear regulatory setting here for digital assets and I know that payments is evolving as well and there’s ⁓ stable coins, the conversations happening around that. But is there an opportunity for Australia? Where do we sit? Could we do better?
speaker-1: Gosh, that’s a great question. ⁓ I think we do have a great opportunity. We are a world leader in a number of products and services already. We have a very ⁓ well-regarded retirement system. We have a very well-regarded funds management industry. ⁓ Our securities market for the size of our country is deep, liquid and attractive to many other countries. ⁓ We have innovations regularly in consumer finance, whether it’s in payments or credit, buy now, pay later. things like that, we are known for regular innovations in both the retail and the wholesale space. ⁓ As you said, we have a sufficient level of clarity ⁓ in the digital asset space and we think in most of the digital finance areas, to be honest. So even though there’s more reforms in payments to come, there is ⁓ enough certainty and clarity there that we are seeing plenty of regular innovation in that space as well.
speaker-0: And with that regulation, if you don’t mind, I’d love to talk a little bit and it wasn’t, cause I, I forgot to ask what it was like front of mind before. ⁓ the sandbox, because this a lot of, ⁓ enthusiasm and curiosity and interest in what your regulatory sandbox looks like post the review. Can you share a little bit of what that sandbox or the purpose and what you expect might come out of that?
speaker-1: Oh, that’s a good question. You might have to have us back when the review actually lands. So look, it is an independent review, I want to respect that. The government has appointed a reviewer. She has about a month to go with that review. So we’re expecting that that will be provided to the government next month and they will respond when they have the opportunity. We have had a regulatory sandbox or one sort or another for about 10 years. And that has enabled numerous firms. half a dozen firms at the moment testing various products and services, particularly in the banking and credit and ⁓ financial advice space. And firms come and go through that sandbox and some graduate to a licence, some move on to other things. So we’re confident that the review will ⁓ build on that and we’ll see a ⁓ further ⁓ enhancement to that sandbox or according to some of the discussion, maybe multiple sandboxes, we’ll see. ⁓ We have done sandbox style projects as well. So you know the work we’ve done with the RBA and the FCSE and others in the wholesale financial market space, asset tokenization, the project at Geisha. ⁓ From our end, ⁓ we did a sandbox type initiative. We gave some relief so people could experiment in that space. So there are other ways that we can facilitate experimentation as well.
speaker-0: Some of the participants who were involved in that DFCRC, the initial pilot project and the second one, I think that open door to ASIC for the relief, I think was a catalyst for some of their success. I mean, just being able to ⁓ build their businesses with that ⁓ clarity and that framework around them. was pivotal in some of the conversations I think. ⁓ And that might be part of why the review is happening because the benefit of that was so remarkable and that’s just first-hand knowledge that I had heard from people who really needed that relief for their projects.
speaker-1: I think that’s right. Sandboxes are great, experimentation is great, we want to get to scale. So we don’t want people to be content with just staying in the sandbox. ⁓ So we really want to see how we can facilitate ⁓ long-term, scaled, ⁓ industrial-level products and services in that space as well. So the Acacia project, the current sandbox, ⁓ hopefully they allow people to experiment. but what we really want then is for folks to go on and build long-term businesses in that space which will serve the wider community. So part of the review will be looking at how we best transition from experimentation and sandboxes to full-scale production.
speaker-0: And I think it, ⁓ it should also be clarified. The, the sandboxes are there for that, that regulatory understanding, learning, and it probably goes both ways where you, where you understand what the business is building and that’s innovation internally also for you. But also it’s when that business leaves that sandbox, there are, it’s, it’s not an ASIC sort of role to play. There’s probably other. entities that come in and support those small businesses as they they scale once they’ve got that regulatory clarity.
speaker-1: Look, I think that’s right. There’s an ecosystem they rely on from professional advisors, funders, trade bodies and the like. ⁓ And those sandboxes, particularly those that are in newer areas. So Acacia is a great example. They’re allowing us to test new ideas about the best regulatory model for some of those products and services. So we have ⁓ lots of experience in regulating traditional securities exchanges and traditional futures exchanges. We only have a small number of tokenised markets so far. We have a couple. have two license so far that’ll grow so that process both the early licensees the ones who come forward and help us ⁓ design the parameters and those through the sandboxes they help us refine ⁓ the rules and the settings and the processes too so yes you’re quite right we get a lot out of that as well.
speaker-0: Yeah, I’m going to go back to digital assets because as you know I’m obsessed. But do you see, where do you see value for digital asset businesses ⁓ for the wider Australian economy?
speaker-1: That’s a good question. I probably don’t think of digital assets as a standalone asset class, but that technology, we’re already seeing benefits in a number of different products and services. So we’re benefits in banking and payments, we’re seeing benefits in investment products, tokenised managed funds, there’s lots of interest in tokenised bonds and debentures and stocks and things like that. So that technology that underlies digital assets, I think we’re going to see ⁓ come through with a number of different use cases that benefit the issuer, so make it more efficient for them to issue their product into the market and have benefits for the end users, make it easier to acquire, easier to hold, easier to trade, easier to get liquidity when they need it.
speaker-0: And so I guess that’s the positive side of it. But where are the areas that concern you?
speaker-1: in the digital assets area. Many of these technologies are dual use technologies. They’re used for ⁓ noble and more nefarious purposes. ⁓ And we see, as we do see in the securities market, ⁓ we see some really strong use cases and really ⁓ well established, thoughtful businesses. And we see some fly by night operators and we see some business cases that don’t ⁓ serve the end user well. So we see that in digital assets too. We see some really risky products, we see some products that are not well communicated, not well disclosed, that have conflicts of interest and other issues going on. So we see good and bad in most markets that we regulate.
speaker-0: And another question on the innovation side, and I’m sorry, we can edit it out later. But I’m really curious as to how you’re seeing ⁓ the AI or agentic influence coming in. I know that as the digital finance advisory panel that we both participate in, that conversation has come up a couple of times. what’s, have you got any thoughts on how that impacts on the financial system? Thank
speaker-1: I still evolving, but yes. So we are seeing a number of interactions with that question. So we are seeing some in the experimental sandbox area wanting to try ⁓ AI powered products, AI powered advice, AI powered budgeting tools and the like. That seems to be a logical and sensible use case and it’s great to see experimentation there. We’re also seeing some bigger organisations wanting to get into this space, ⁓ some more established brands. in the banking and sub-annuation and funds management space want to that to their offering and it’s good that they’re thinking through that. There’s a large segment of the population that doesn’t have access to a traditional financial advisor at the moment and access to advice has been a long-term ⁓ issue of interest and concern for us so this looks like it’s got the potential to open up ⁓ financial advice to a lot more people and change the economics of advice. ⁓ That’s something we’re really interested in. talking to a few people about. ⁓ It’s going to affect. ⁓ most parts of the financial services system. It’ll affect portfolio management and asset management. It’ll affect ⁓ credit assessment and credit decisions. It’ll affect insurance pricing at already years and claims handling and all those sorts of things. We did publish a report last year on this and our focus was particularly around systems and controls and governance. So we’re not in a position to advise on which AI model you should use or how you should configure it, but you would expect us as the financial services and corporate regulator to have a view on what is good governance around these things. Does your board fully understand how the product works and what the risks are and how are you managing them? How have you gone through your due diligence process, your procurement process to onboard a partner in this space and how confident are you of about what they’re delivering and how are you monitoring and supervising it over time. ⁓ So, you know, we have expressed a view publicly on those things as you’d probably expect us to and we’ll continue monitoring. I think there’s a lot of great potential ⁓ and we are a medium-sized government agency in our own right. So as you would expect, we are looking at how some of these technologies might be used inside the organisation as well.
speaker-0: Are there any, you might not, well actually maybe you do, are there any guardrails in place for AI use or company use at the moment?
speaker-1: There are some Australia-wide guidance and guardrails and recent establishment of AI Safety Institute. There are a number of state and federal bodies looking into this. ⁓ This is a whole of economy topic. It’s not sort of a uniquely ASIC topic. We’ve weighed in around things like systems and controls and governance and auditability. We have given some guidance on digital financial advice, for example, so some specific applications so far. ⁓ But we don’t own this topic outright. This is a topic that ⁓ many different organisations are going to input into.
speaker-0: And I think that’s important that many different organisations ⁓ have input into. It’s a massive can of worms and I think we’ve got our work cut out for us. ⁓ I think we might ⁓ wrap and my original question was, know, what can we learn from now or what do you see happening over the next 10 years? But I’m curious to know what your next 12 months looks like. I mean, a smaller picture for.
speaker-1: I think. ⁓ So my team, as you know, is the FinTech team at ASICS. I look after our innovation, digital finance, digital assets work. The legislation has just passed through the parliament and will commence shortly. So a big project for us will be implementing the digital asset reforms. Over the next 12 months, that means some standards, some regulatory guides, a lot of interaction with yourself and others in industry to set that regime up. So we’re ready for people to start applying for those sorts of licences or adding that to the existing licence as the case may be. ⁓ And there’s some internal things that we need to do to be ready for that as well, as well as those public facing activities. As you know, we’ve also got a role to administer the current law. So we have a number of digital asset, digital finance firms who are already caught by the current law and in the process of getting a licence. We’ve licensed a few stable coin firms already, a few firms who are in the intermediary space or market space that relate to digital assets. And that’ll only grow as people get their head around our guidance last year in Info 225. And then more broadly, our innovation work continues, be it sandbox work, work around tokenisation and how that affects financial markets more generally. We have a lot in your space and we’ll be talking pretty regularly over the next 12 months, I suspect.
speaker-0: And the original question that I was going to ask in 10 years, what do you think we’ll look back on and say, we did that really well.
speaker-1: What do I hope to look back on in 10 years and say we did that really well? ⁓ I hope we’re looking back and seeing that we were improving the way that products and services are delivered to the end customer. ⁓ I’m hoping that we have less conferences about the technology, less conferences about blockchain and its intricacies, and we’re having more conversations about how do we deliver better products, how do we deliver better services, how do we make our financial system work better for the end user, the households and the businesses that need to rely on it to make payments, to make investments, to mobilise capital, to manage their risk, to finance their business or their home purchase or whatever it be. That’s what I hope we can look back on.
speaker-0: Okay, so top tip for our conference this year is to pivot into some how do we do business better.
speaker-1: So I think back to earlier days where during the dot com period where we were talking a lot about e-commerce and the internet and how that was going to change everything and whether we would need standalone laws for internet and e-commerce and standalone regulators and we eventually figured out it was just a way of doing our products and our services better. Making them faster, making them cheaper, making them accessible to more people. I would suggest that might be similar here.
speaker-0: I wish I had have talked to you about those days at the beginning. Maybe another conversation for another time. Thank you so much for joining us on the House’s digital race. been a pleasure. Thank you. digital, where policy meets innovation. Stay curious, stay inspired and be part of the movement building Australia’s next economy. The future is happening now. See you in the next episode.