APRA ramps up super data disclosure

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) declared it will publish more than 120 new superannuation performance statistics and publish statistics on MySuper products for the first time.

Following submissions on its proposed changes to super statistics publications, APRA announced it will include additional statistics to the Quarterly Superannuation Performance Statistics publication and Quarterly MySuper Statistics report as sought by respondents.

APRA also deliberated on data confidentiality and proposed a phased approach to make data publicly available.

For now, it will publish data on MySuper fees, costs and net returns as required by section 348A of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993.

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APRA said it aims to use a new data dissemination tool to publicly release super statistics which will allow "manipulation, visualisation and analysis".

"Implementation of this new tool will take some time and accordingly the fully revised quarterly statistical publications and reports, and the ability to access the data in the new database will not be available until late in 2015 at the earliest," APRA said in the announcement.

It will also publish additional MySuper product and institutional-level data that does not interfere with the commercial interests of registrable superannuation entities (RSE) licensees.

APRA has declared the following data as non-confidential under section 57 of the APRA act: RSE licensee ownership, RSE licensee profit status, board structure, membership base, defined benefit RSE, and MySuper product and lifecycle stages.

It also wants data published on strategic asset allocation including asset class, domicile and listing type, and benchmark asset allocation. among others.

Some submissions showed concern data publication would invade privacy but APRA said it is still bound by the Privacy Act 1998 and would not disclose personal information to anyone but the individual, except under exceptional circumstances.

APRA's changes come after it released a discussion paper in November last year on super statistical publication and data confidentiality, and sought submissions from the industry.

It said the proposed changes support the Stronger Super reforms and implementation of the prudential standards, and meet APRA's legislative obligation to publish MySuper product statistics.