ISBIS4 Abstract

Contact Author's Name: John Laker
Title of Abstract: Use of Financial Statistics in the Australian Financial System
Author(s): John Laker
Affiliation: Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority



The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is the prudential regulator of the Australian financial services industry. It supervises banks, credit unions, building societies, general insurance and reinsurance companies, life insurers, friendly societies and most members of the superannuation industry. APRA currently supervises institutions holding $2.0 trillion in assets for 20 million Australian depositors, policyholders and superannuation fund members.

It does this by establishing and enforcing prudential standards and practices designed to ensure that, under all reasonable circumstances, financial promises made by supervised institutions are met within a stable, efficient and competitive financial system.

Through the course of its surveillance of financial institutions, through working with the international regulatory community in setting risk-management standards, through its work on risk models and through acting as the national collection agency for financial statistics, APRA is in a unique and privileged position to see how financial statistics are used across the Australian financial system.

This paper presents APRA’s perspective of how statistics are used in the Australian financial system.