Mariana Paun shares recollections from the Tech Council's May 2026 'Future of Innovation in Australia's Financial Services Sector' panel in Sydney.
Last week I joined a panel at Block's Chippendale HQ that I suspect will be remembered as something of a marker.
Not just because it was outgoing ASIC Chair Joe Longo's final public appearance — though that gave the afternoon a particular weight — but because of the conversation itself.
For an hour, a regulator, a major bank, and a payments fintech sat at the same table and talked honestly about where Australian financial services sector is heading, what's working, and what isn't.
That kind of conversation doesn't happen by accident. And what struck me most wasn't any single exchange, but the fact that we were having it at all.
The Stakes Were Named Clearly
Longo opened with a story about Hero of Alexandria, the ancient inventor whose steam and wind-powered machines were technically brilliant but historically irrelevant — built too far ahead of the institutions and investment needed to make them matter. The metaphor was pointed: ingenuity without the right conditions doesn't change anything.
He was talking about Australia. We built Afterpay. We have the NPP and PayTo infrastructure. We produce more unicorns per VC dollar invested than almost any country on earth. And yet, new ASIC-commissioned research from the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), launched at the same event, shows that in critical areas — insurance technology, wealth management, embedded SME lending — we're still developing, while comparable markets have moved on.
The research is worth reading in full, because it names the gaps with precision rather than rhetoric. AI and automation are no longer experimental tools in financial services globally — they are operational systems running at scale. And while Australia has strong foundations in payments infrastructure and consumer credit regulation, the report identifies a consistent pattern: our strengths are in what we've built, not yet in how far we've extended it.
That's the honest picture. And I think honesty about it is the starting point for doing something about it.
What a Scaling Fintech Actually Sees
My perspective at the panel was from a different lens compared to others at the table, and I think that difference matters.
Zepto operates at the infrastructure layer of real-time payments. We're not a startup testing ideas in a sandbox — we're a regulated entity whose customers rely on for operational continuity, handling real payments at meaningful scale every day. That comes with security, resilience and compliance requirements that a lot of people assume is the exclusive domain of banks. It isn't.
What that experience gives us is a ground-level view of where the regulatory environment genuinely supports innovation, and where it creates friction that doesn't need to exist.
The panel discussion touched on regulatory sandboxes, and I think this is an area where the current approach could go further. The concept is sound — allow businesses to engage with ASIC early, test ideas, and iterate without facing the full weight of compliance penalties before a product even exists. In practice, however, access and fit vary considerably.
Larger institutions face a different structural challenge: developments that might qualify for sandbox treatment often touch their broader capital and operational base, which changes the calculus entirely. Some have addressed this in part through the creation of entities that support innovation by providing dedicated compliance and security infrastructure.
But for a fintech like Zepto — regulated, growing, operating in a space the research report identifies as strategically important for Australia — the question isn't whether sandboxes exist. It's whether the framework around them is consistent and consolidated enough to plan against, and whether early-stage engagement with regulators is proactively encouraged rather than just permitted.
I believe the will is there. Longo's framing of ASIC as wanting to be 'backers, not blockers' of financial innovation was a strong message. But will needs architecture around it.
The AI Question Nobody Has Fully Answered
Artificial intelligence came up repeatedly throughout the panel, and it deserves direct comment rather than the careful hedging it often receives.
The DFCRC report is clear: AI governance gaps persist in every jurisdiction. No regulator — not the EU, not Singapore, not the UK — has fully resolved how existing obligations apply to automated decisions in credit, insurance, compliance or payments. The EU's AI Act and Singapore's FEAT principles represent the most advanced thinking, but even they leave significant questions open.
For a fintech with my particular responsibility set, this isn't an abstract concern. Business resilience depends on understanding which systems are making which decisions, on what basis, and with what accountability when something goes wrong. The move toward AI-driven operations makes that harder, not easier, unless governance is built in from the start rather than retrofitted after deployment.
What I said at the panel, and what I believe, is that smaller teams like ours can actually implement and use AI well — not despite our size, but in part because of it. We don't have legacy systems pulling in different directions. We can build accountability into our AI governance from day one. The question is whether the regulatory environment rewards that kind of proactive approach or simply waits to see what breaks.
The research report makes a useful observation here: the jurisdictions making the most progress aren't necessarily those with the most prescriptive AI legislation. They're the ones that have developed practical, principles-based frameworks that give businesses clarity about expectations without locking in specific technologies. That's the model Australia should be building toward.
On Being in the Room
I'll be honest: when the invitation came, I felt the weight of it. Joe Longo has spent five years at the head of one of Australia's most consequential regulatory institutions. Stuart Munro leads strategy for one of the country's largest banks. Walking into that conversation as a representative of a scaling fintech is not a moment you take lightly.
But I also think that kind of representation matters. Zepto has invested consistently in public consultations, in engagement with the Tech Council of Australia, in building the credibility that earns a seat at these tables. And what I hope I brought to the conversation is a perspective that isn't available from inside a major bank or a regulator — the view of a company that is simultaneously highly regulated and focused on moving fast, that has built security and compliance into its operating DNA not because it had to, but because trust is the product.
That's not a small-company perspective. It's a next-generation fintech perspective, and it's increasingly relevant as the sector matures.
What Comes Next
The panel was described as a starting point for a broader public-private dialogue. I think that framing is right, and I'd add: the value of the dialogue depends on who's in it.
The DFCRC research points to several areas where Australia needs to move: more specific guidance on AI in financial decisions, stronger oversight of products sold through non-financial digital journeys, and a meaningful expansion of open finance beyond banking. These aren't small asks, and none of them will be resolved in a single panel discussion.
But they are the right questions. And the fact that a room full of regulators, major banks, and fintech operators agreed on that — and agreed that the cost of inaction is real — feels like progress worth building on.
Hero of Alexandria didn't lack ingenuity. What he lacked was the right moment, and the right institutions to carry his ideas forward. We have both within reach. The only question is how we’re going to use them.
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