Argus Information & Advisory Services, a Verisk business, is selling a new suite of cloud-based regulatory reporting software on the Australian market. It is doing so at a time when reporting requirements are undergoing a major overhaul.

The new product is a response to the recent Economic and Financial Statistics (EFS) modernisation and purports to streamline the reporting process for financial institutions. Argus is making much play of the fact that such products meet a growing need for automation among banks.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) recently announced its first overhaul of reporting requirements since the early 2000s. Within the next two or three years, it will call on financial institutions to provide it with data that is more detailed and of better quality. By the end of 2019, institutions have to become EFS-compliant as part of a three-phase plan. Both deposit-taking institutions and others must change the ways in which they send in their reports.

The compliance process is going to be daunting for banks, which are going to have to upgrade both processes and IT in order to generate new reports with detailed and granular data sets. 'Siloed data' and reporting environments may come under stress and, indeed, may become inadequate for their purpose. The regulators are seeking auditable contract- and transaction-level information.

Argus has a proprietary data management platform which helps banks manage all business configurations and report validations in line with regulatory expectations. It is touting its new software as "a next-gen RegTech solution that has already proven effective in other jurisdictions."