Insights from the APRA-ASIC Industry Roundtables

APRA and ASIC jointly published Insights from the APRA-ASIC Industry Roundtables on 27 August 2026, summarising findings from nine roundtables held in June and July 2026 involving more than 380 entities and over 600 attendees from across the financial system. The roundtables followed earlier public letters issued by APRA and ASIC in April and May 2026 setting out expectations of regulated entities regarding preparedness for frontier artificial intelligence risks, and were supported by the Australian Signals Directorate, with participation from the Reserve Bank of Australia, Treasury and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The publication states that frontier AI is accelerating existing cyber, technology and operational risks, increasing the speed, scale and sophistication of cyber threats, and creating the potential for unintended actions from increasingly autonomous systems. Key themes identified included the importance of getting cyber fundamentals right, such as identifying critical assets and systems, timely patching, strong identity and access controls, backup integrity and tested incident response arrangements. The regulators also highlighted the need for boards to consider risk appetite, escalation authority and recovery priorities before a crisis occurs, given that frontier AI can compress incident response timeframes.

The publication also noted growing interest among regulated entities in using defensive AI tools for threat intelligence, vulnerability detection and incident response, while acknowledging that capability in this area remains limited across the industry. It further identified common dependency and concentration risk associated with third party service providers as a factor that could turn isolated incidents into broader, sector wide disruption. The publication is an information paper summarising industry discussion rather than a binding standard or new regulatory requirement.