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The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) should cease providing statistics on superannuation and hand the function over to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), according to actuarial research house Rice Warner.
The call is contained in Rice Warner’s submission to the second tranche of the Cooper Review into superannuation, which has suggested that the ABS has a more rigorous process for monitoring national statistics.
“We note that APRA statistics have been unreliable on occasion and both APRA and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) frequently adjust past statistics, often without explanation,” the submission said.
The Rice Warner criticism of APRA’s statistical collection has come less than a year after the former Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law Senator Nick Sherry instructed the regulator to provide a more detailed analysis of super fund performance.
Elsewhere in its submission, Rice Warner has also called for the appointment of an independent consultant to review the activities of Australia’s financial services regulators to determine whether there is any overlap between them.
But it also said that the ATO should be the only agency tasked with monitoring superannuation contributions.
