UK and Australia Hold Second Financial Regulatory Forum, Issuing Joint Statement on Bilateral Cooperation Framework
HM Treasury and the Australian Treasury issued a joint statement on 29 October 2026 following the second meeting of their bilateral UK-Australia Financial Regulatory Forum. The forum brings together senior financial regulatory officials from both countries to coordinate on shared policy priorities. The statement represents the formal output of a structured bilateral dialogue designed to deepen cooperation between the UK and Australian financial regulatory ecosystems. Both countries operate sophisticated financial regulation frameworks and are significant trading and investment partners, with London and Sydney being major financial centres in their respective time zones. The forum's convening follows a pattern of bilateral financial regulatory engagement that the UK has been building with key partners in the post-Brexit period, as part of efforts to maintain and develop equivalence, cooperation, and mutual recognition arrangements outside the EU framework. No specific policy decisions or regulatory changes are detailed in the available source.
Why this matters
Bilateral financial regulatory forums of this kind are the architecture through which the UK builds post-Brexit equivalence and cooperation arrangements. The second meeting of the UK-Australia forum signals that the relationship is moving from an initial exploratory phase to a structured ongoing dialogue, which can eventually support mutual recognition of regulatory decisions, joint supervisory approaches, and reduced friction for cross-border financial services. For firms with operations in both jurisdictions, progress in this forum can reduce compliance duplication over time.
On the Ground
International financial regulation practices and financial services trade teams will monitor the joint statement for signals about emerging cooperation areas, particularly around equivalence for financial products, fintech licensing, and sustainable finance taxonomies. At trainee level, work on cross-border regulatory matters typically involves preparing choice-of-law summaries, drafting cross-border legal opinion coordination requests, and producing regulatory impact assessment memos comparing the two jurisdictions' approaches to the specific topics the forum has agreed to advance.
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