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APRA weighs benefits, industry weighs costs
John Trowbridge
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has moved to simplify the collection of data from the life insurance industry, admitting that its existing processes are more than a decade old.
The regulator has released a discussion paper in which it outlines the changes it is proposing and its relative benefits, but acknowledges that the costs are hard to assess.
In the discussion paper, APRA said it expected the benefits of introducing the proposed reporting standards and data collections for life insurers and friendly societies would be “very substantial”.
However, it said the costs of the proposal “are difficult for APRA to assess”.
“APRA requests assistance from the life insurance industry to estimate these costs and would appreciate any submission on this subject,” it said.
Explaining the regulator’s approach, APRA member John Trowbridge said the new standards were being developed in consultation with the life insurance and friendly society industries, which support improved data collection processes.
“Both the life insurance industry and the friendly society industry have changed substantially over the past 10 years, but the structure of data collections has remained static. The proposed new process will be a significant step forward”, he said.
Trowbridge said the existing processes for data collection from life companies were more than 10 years old and had been inherited from APRA’s predecessor organisations, the Australian Financial Institutions Commission and the Insurance and Superannuation Commission.
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