A message from APRA Chair Wayne Byres
Welcome to the first edition of the new-look APRA Insight.
Over the past 18 months, the financial services industry has been subject to unprecedented scrutiny over its performance, conduct and treatment of customers. The regulators, including APRA, have also been under the microscope for how effectively we have supervised the companies we regulate and held them to account when they did the wrong thing. As a result of that scrutiny, including the Royal Commission, the more recent Capability Review, and APRA’s own Enforcement Review, we have been looking to lift our capabilities across a range of areas, including our public communications.
APRA‘s mandate, responsibilities and approach to regulation and supervision are not always well understood. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as the highly complex nature of prudential supervision, as well as constraints on disclosing many of our decisions and actions.
As public interest in APRA has grown, we have recognised the need to improve our transparency and communication. We made it a key strategic priority in our Corporate Plan to improve our external engagement and collaboration. The findings of both the Royal Commission and the Capability Review further emphasised that more can and should be done to give the public confidence that action is being taken to hold financial entities and their leaders to account, and to address underperformance and poor outcomes.
Past versions of APRA Insight didn’t do enough to help in this area. The previous Insight format, launched in 2012, was aimed primarily at the companies and industries we regulate. The articles were usually highly technical and often dealt with important but niche issues that were of limited interest to those who didn’t work in that area.
The revamped Insight that we are launching today is different. We have intentionally overhauled the structure of Insight to make the contents relevant and accessible to a much broader audience. Our goal is to help the public and interested stakeholders to gain a clearer understanding of what we do and why we do it.
You will find links to all our recent media releases, speeches and publications to help you stay up-to-date on our activities. We have also provided a forward-looking view of what is on the horizon for APRA.
Insight also now features a series of short and informative articles. In this edition, we:
- unveil new details about APRA’s data modernisation program;
- outline the expansion of the Banking Executive Accountability Regime to medium and small banks;
- clarify a common misinterpretation of APRA’s data on average housing loan figures;
- examine a recent case study of intra-group funding arrangements in the banking sector in ‘APRA supervision in action’; and
- provide a visual depiction of the changing superannuation landscape in ‘Data find’.
I hope you find the new Insight format both useful and engaging, and we welcome any feedback or suggestions for articles to communications@apra.gov.au.
Wayne Byres
APRA Chair
This article was published in APRA Insight - Issue 1 2019.