APRA report details exits and failures
With elements of the financial services industry still complaining about costs of the so-called "APRA levy", the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has revealed that its expenditure in 2011/12 of $121.1 million was well down on that of 2005.
Releasing its annual report late last week, APRA revealed that its costs had actually declined from 2005 to 2007 but began to pick up over the subsequent five years following a build-up in supervisory numbers and capacity in the early stages of the global financial crisis.
However, the regulator noted that relative to the value of assets supervised by APRA, "costs have remained at about three cents per $1,000 of assets supervised".
The APRA annual report made clear that the so-called "APRA levy" was, in fact, collected to cover some of the costs of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
The report also revealed that, over the four years to the middle of 2011, around half of the institutions it supervised which fell into the "mandated improvement" category of its processes had exited the industry.
It said that over the past eight years, a total of 218 institutions had been in the two top categories for regulatory oversight (mandated improvement or restructure), of which 50 had improved their stance to a normal category or oversight and 142 had "exited without loss to beneficiaries", while six institutions had failed.
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