APRA Updates Reporting Standards and Guidance for EFS Data Collection

Among other decisions, the Australian agencies—APRA, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)—have decided not to proceed with the change of due dates for monthly reporting and, therefore, returns will continue to be due within 28 calendar days after the end of the reporting period. Consequently, no changes have been made to the reporting standards on ABS/RBA Bill Acceptances and Endorsements (ARS 720.7) and Margin Lending (ARS 723.0). The revisions to the EFS standards and guidance will not apply retrospectively to reporting periods that occur prior to the reporting period ending on September 30, 2021. Given the concerns raised by industry, the agencies have moved the implementation date of the changes for most of the standards from the reporting period ending on June 30, 2021 to September 30, 2021, to provide entities with additional lead time. The exceptions are Reporting Standards ARS 722.0 ABS/RBA Derivatives, ARS 730.1 ABS/RBA Fees Charged, and RRS 710.0 ABS/RBA Audit Requirements for Registered Financial Corporations—EFS Collection. The implementation date for ARS 722.0 and ARS 730.1 will remain as the reporting period ending on or after March 31, 2021. The information required by ARS 730.1 must be provided in respect of each year ended June 30. The first reporting period for ARS 730.1 will, therefore, be July 01, 2020 to June 30, 2021.

The revisions to RRS 710.0 will commence from July 01, 2021 and until this time the extension provided on October 11, 2019 will continue to apply. With respect to the proposal to collect additional data on deposit interest rates in ARS 747.0, the industry feedback highlighted that this additional data collection would impose significant additional burden in the form of initial project costs and ongoing reporting and compliance costs. Thus, the agencies decided not to proceed with this change. Additionally, one submissions highlighted the overlap between the information required for Prudential Standard APS 220 Credit Risk Management and Reporting Standard ARS 720.1 ABS/RBA Loans and Finance Leases and proposed that the EFS data for impaired assets could be collected as a subset of the data collected for the prudential standard. To address this, APRA is designing the future collection for the prudential standard to be able to be used for multiple purposes and will consider the removal of overlapping data requirements at a future date. 

Related Links

• News Release
• Final Standards and Guidance
• Response Letter (PDF)

Keywords: Asia Pacific, Australia, Banking, Reporting, EFS Collection, EFS, Credit Risk, APRA