Australian regulator to collect more data on banks' credit exposures

By Paulina Duran

SYDNEY, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Australia's banking regulator plans to collect more detailed data on banks' credit exposures and provisions from March 2022, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) told the country's lenders in a letter on Wednesday.

The changes to APRA's credit risk reporting framework aim to help it use data models more efficiently and have banks submit raw rather than aggregated data in a specific format or table form.

"By collecting data at a granular level, APRA aims to reduce the regulatory data burden on the industry, by minimising duplication of data collections and reducing the number of ad-hoc data requests in future," the letter said.

The letter introduces a new standard, Reporting Standard ARS 220.0 Credit Exposures and Provisions, and calls for submissions from banks by Jan. 28.

"Compared with the existing collection, the draft ARS 220.0 will collect more detailed data on (banks') credit exposures and provisions," APRA said.

The regulator said it would remove requirements from current reporting forms, including "detail on interest income and certain breakdowns of impaired and past due items".

A requirement to categorise provisions into separate time buckets will also be removed.

The new standard is expected to start from Jan. 1, 2022, with banks due to start their reporting at the end of the quarter ending Mar. 31.

(Reporting by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue and Stephen Coates)

((paulina.duran@thomsonreuters.com; +61 2 9171 7406;))

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