With an air of noticeable contrition, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority is keen to advertise the things it has been doing to please the Hayne Royal Commission. To this end, its chairman Wayne Byers has published a list.

A major programme of work for APRA in 2019 was the extension of the Banking Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) from the four major banks (which became subject to the regime in 2018) to 148 small-to-medium-sized authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs, which include 93 banks and 47 credit unions and building societies), effective by 1 July. The BEAR places stringent accountability-related obligations on all ADIs and small-to-medium-sized banks and required all ADIs to lodge the requisite 'accountability statements' and maps with APRA in time for the beginning of the new requirements. All told, almost 1,500 executives are now registered under the BEAR regime. Furthermore, as part of its response to the Royal Commission, the Government announced that it plans to extend the BEAR obligations throughout the insurance and superannuation sectors, if not further.

Window dressing

APRA is proud of the fact that it has almost doubled the rate at which it puts out press releases, webinars and speeches, totals of which are in the table below.

Year                   2018     2019
Press releases      65      102
Speeches               16      22
Webinars                6      12

The webinar figure does not take in 10 webinars regarding the regulator's new Data Collection Solution, a piece of software to be built by Vizor Software and Dimension Data that will draw data from 4,500 companies. It will be called APRA Connect.

Three out of ten ain't bad

After Commissioner Hayne released his report, APRA set out its policy for fulfilling the 10 recommendations that required its direct attention. It completed three by the end of last year. It announced "a renewed approach to co-operation" with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, published BEAR-style accountability statements for APRA executives and finalised amendments to prudential requirements in relation to the valuation of collateral.