Out-of-cycle assessment of ASX Clear Pty Ltd and ASX Settlement Pty Ltd: Operational Risk Standard – March 2025 Executive Summary

Following the CHESS batch settlement failure incident (CHESS incident) on 20 December 2024, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has carried out an out-of-cycle assessment of ASX Clear Pty Ltd (ASX Clear) and ASX Settlement Pty Ltd (ASX Settlement) against the RBA’s Financial Stability Standard for Operational Risk.¹ The RBA conducts an annual assessment of the four clearing and settlement facilities within the ASX Group against the RBA’s Financial Stability Standards (FSS). Assessments are generally published in September or October each year. Due to the seriousness of the CHESS incident, the RBA has decided, for the first time, to revise its assessment against one of the FSS outside the usual annual cycle.

The Payments System Board has endorsed an immediate downgrade of ASX Clear and ASX Settlement to not observed in relation to the Operational Risk standard. The RBA has conducted this Assessment in accordance with its ‘Approach to Supervising and Assessing Clearing and Settlement Facility Licensees’.² The downgrade applies to both ASX Clear and ASX Settlement as both are reliant on CHESS as critical infrastructure for their respective operations.

The ratings for the ASX clearing and settlement facilities, as adjusted following this out-of-cycle assessment are presented in Table 1.

* Arrows in brackets indicate the ratings change from the 2024 ASX Assessment: a down arrow indicates a downgrade.

** ASX Clear (Futures) and Austraclear ratings as at 2024 ASX Assessment. They have not been assessed in March.

Endnotes

Financial Stability Standards for Central Counterparties and Financial Stability Standards for Securities Settlement Facilities. 1

See RBA (2024), ‘The Reserve Bank’s Approach to Supervising and Assessing Clearing and Settlement Facility Licensees’, 6 December. 2