ASX asked to up risk management practices following equity market outage
Summary
Shortly after, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) identified a number of failings on the part of ASX, and made recommendations followings its initial review.The previous CHESS system -- which dates back to the 1990s -- is used by the ASX to record shareholdings and manage the clearing and settlement of equity transactions publicly listed in Australia.US-based blockchain firm Digital Asset is responsible for the CHESS project, with the company building the ASX an enterprise-grade distributed ledger technology solution for core equity clearing and settlement functions.Initially the solution was slated for go-live at the end of 2020, but earlier this month the ASX reported it was pushing back the earliest commencement date for its new CHESS system to March-April 2021.In delivering its first-half AU$230.5 million after-tax profit, the ASX unveiled a number of tech-based projects it has in the pipeline aimed at making business easier for ASX-listed companies, as well as for its own internal processes.