Mrs. Pornanong Budsaratragoon, SEC Secretary-General, and SEC management team took part in the APRC discussions and shared insights and experiences on supervisory approaches to the emerging challenges for capital market developments in the Asia Pacific region, e.g., online harms, upon which the forum agreed to the approach of further strengthening communications and collaborations with related parties, including online platform service providers as those platforms are the channels mostly used by fraudsters and scammers. Policy directions and examples of technological applications in market supervision and enforcement were also discussed. As for the issue of sustainable finance promotion, a number of jurisdictions have established explicit directions for encouraging listed companies to adopt sustainability disclosure standards according to the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). In requiring such disclosure adoption, the challenges faced by the disclosers include data collection, technical assessments on the use of scenario analysis and financial impact assessment of climate-related risks. The forum participants, therefore, considered leveraging technologies for reducing data collection burden as well as the importance of having tools and guidelines to support listed companies in smoothly transitioning their disclosure practices from alignment with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards to alignment with internationally recognized standards.  

The SEC Secretary-General also joined the panel discussions in the EU-Asia Pacific Forum on Financial Regulation to exchange perspectives on the issues of cross-border risks and challenges in the area of crypto-asset and tokenization regulation and enforcement upon which information sharing cooperation among jurisdictions across the region should be promoted to enhance the efficiency of supervision as well as law enforcement among regulatory authorities and all sectors of the capital market.

In addition, Ms. Nopnuanparn Pavasant, SEC Assistant Secretary-General, took part in the panel discussion in the State Securities Commission of Vietnam’s Symposium on the topic : “Enhancing Market Resilience: Inter-Regional Regulatory Approaches”, in which she shared Thailand’s perspectives in the panel discussion on the topic “Pathways to Globally Consistent Crypto and Digital Asset Regulation – Developments and Challenges”, highlighting innovations promotion and digital asset regulation in the Thai capital market where advanced technologies have been leveraged in various initiatives, including asset tokenization, digital asset regulatory sandbox, the operation of digital asset businesses with investor protection, supervisory approaches that are aligned with the international standards*, as well as information exchange and cooperation among regulatory authorities overseeing digital assets to cope with the emerging developments, risks and threats in this area.

APRC is one of the IOSCO Regional Committees, consisting of 33 regulatory and relevant agencies from the Asia-Pacific capital markets in 28 jurisdictions. 

Remarks: * International standards, such as those of International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), Financial Stability Board (FSB) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF).