APRA Flags Tougher Enforcement Approach

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The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has indicated it will be less patient with uncooperative entities in future and more forceful in expressing its specific expectations.

The corporate regulator made this commitment in releasing details on the future role and use of enforcement activities in achieving its prudential objectives.

APRA Chair, Wayne Byres, said APRA would implement all the recommendations made by an Enforcement Review it conducted late last year, including:

  • Adopting a “constructively tough” appetite to enforcement and setting it out in a board-endorsed enforcement strategy document
  • Ensuring APRA supervisors are supported and empowered to hold institutions and individuals to account, and strengthening governance of enforcement-related decisions
  • Combining APRA’s enforcement, investigation and legal experts in one strengthened support team, and ensuring resources are available to support the pursuit of enforcement action where appropriate
  • Strengthening cooperation on enforcement matters with ASIC
[APRA] could achieve better outcomes …by taking stronger action earlier

The review was conducted by APRA Deputy Chair, John Lonsdale, who said it found APRA had, on the whole, performed well in its primary role of protecting the soundness and stability of institutions. He noted, however, that the regulator could achieve better outcomes in the future by taking stronger action earlier where entities were not cooperative or open, and by being more willing to set public examples.