The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has issued a brief statement regarding today’s outage at the ASX24 futures market.

The ASX24 futures market trading platform entered into a trading halt at around 10:00am Thursday 17 March and reopened around 2:00pm in the afternoon. ASIC says it remained in regular communication with ASX, market participants, and members of the Australian Council of Financial Regulators.

ASX will be required to provide a full incident report to ASIC.

ASIC notes that it views outages of this nature with significant concern. It has had a significant impact on the market, including market participants and investors.

The ASX Group forms a critical part of Australia’s national economic infrastructure. Well-functioning financial market infrastructure is critical to the integrity and reputation of the Australian financial markets and the trust and confidence investors have in them.

Let’s recall that ASX suffered a major outage on November 16, 2020.

About a year later, ASIC announced the imposition of additional licence conditions on three licences held within the ASX Group. This happened as the regulator has concluded its investigation and consideration of the November 2020 market outage at the ASX.

The licence conditions were directed at mitigating risks for future upgrades, with specific emphasis on the oversight of the CHESS Replacement Program, due to go live in April 2023.