A revamped Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) unit is expected to start operating from July 1 this year. This will be as part of a drive to provide greater consistency in the supervision of superannuation funds and to allow APRA to increase its on-site visits, says APRA general manager policy development and statistics Greg Brunner.
He adds that the unit will have five or six staff members and will be overseen by a gener
al manager, who is yet to be appointed, but who will provide progress reports to APRA’s CEO Graeme Thompson.
Brunner says APRA’s objective will be to implement the same supervision processes in each office across the country and to also examine benchmarking and best practice procedures.
He says the unit will increase the number of visits to superannuation funds to 1,000 this year, compared with 600 last year. It will push this up further to 1,200 on-site visits in 2003.
“We are getting to funds we have never been able to get to before,” he says.
