The ASX will put on more staff to respond to problems with its ageing clearing and settlement system for the equity market, and pledged to improve reporting to its board, in response to a damning Reserve Bank assessment on its capability to manage risk.

The market operator said more resources were needed to enhance its ability to respond quickly to incidents, whenever they occur. The action comes after the central bank in late March downgraded its assessment of the ASX’s compliance with a core operational risk standard. That followed a pre-Christmas outage of the CHESS system that crippled stock settlements.