On 23 March 2026, the Global Fintech Institute and Murdoch University convened a closed-door roundtable in Perth, bringing together 24 senior leaders spanning banking, digital asset exchanges, legal practice, technology, and academia. The session, held under Chatham House Rule, addressed three interconnected challenges reshaping the financial services landscape: the governance of agentic AI, the trust infrastructure for digital asset custody, and the regulatory conditions for tokenised capital markets to achieve institutional scale.
The roundtable opened with a working session exploring how trust is constructed and maintained in financial systems undergoing rapid technological change. Participants then moved into substantive discussion on autonomous AI systems already deployed across compliance, credit decisioning, and advisory functions. The room identified a critical gap: most regulatory frameworks were designed for human decision-makers and have not been updated to address algorithmic accountability, real-time audit requirements, or liability allocation when autonomous agents fail or produce biased outcomes.
On digital asset custody, participants moved beyond the question of whether institutions should hold digital assets to how custody infrastructure should be designed. The discussion produced concrete recommendations for segregation mandates, multi-signature governance, cold storage minimums, and proportionate insurance frameworks calibrated to asset volatility rather than flat thresholds.
The final session addressed tokenisation of real-world assets, where participants agreed that the binding constraint is not technology but regulatory interoperability. Without cross-border mutual recognition of tokenised instruments, institutional capital will remain concentrated in familiar jurisdictions, limiting the efficiency gains that tokenisation promises.
Professor David Lee Kuo Chuen, Chairman of the Global Fintech Institute, and Professor Domenico Gasbarro of Murdoch University co-moderated the discussions, drawing on perspectives from across the financial ecosystem to develop actionable recommendations for APAC policymakers, regulators, and institutions.
The full insights report, including detailed policy recommendations, will be published on the GFI portal next week. GFI members can access the complete report through the members' portal. For enquiries, contact [email protected].