APRA subjects itself to scrutiny from the inside

THE Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) will subject itself to its own regulatory gaze following the appointment of John Doble, who joins APRA next month to head up a new quality assurance and consistency unit.

Doble is charged with assessing APRA’s operational efficiency to find ways of improving performance.

“I’ll spend the first few weeks making a diagnosis of APRA to determine the scope and size of the task at hand, and then hope to start implementing strategies to improve performance by the end of the year,” Doble says.

“An organisation must continually improve itself — the world moves at a very fast pace and businesses need to move with it.”

In order to make his assessment, Doble intends to travel extensively between APRA branches throughout Australia, where he will conduct a series of meetings and interviews to get a feel for the organisation’s corporate culture to determine where changes need to be made.

He will also look at international regulators, particularly in Canada and the UK, where regulatory bodies have a solid reputation, to see whether international standards can be used to set benchmarks for the Australian market.

The financial services sector will benefit, he says, because the move to set up a unit for quality assurance and consistency is part of APRA’s goal to establish itself as a best-practice regulator.

Doble will hire other staff to work with him on the project, but first needs to determine which areas require attention.

The unit will then work towards setting internal regulatory standards and external benchmarks for supervision and enforcement.

Doble’s appointment begins on September 3.

He brings to the job experience gained in his former role at Accenture, where he was quality director for the group’s Asia Pacific financial services division.

Meanwhile, in a further move to increase resources and improve functionality, APRA recently added a fourth branch within its diversified institutions division, which is managed by Mark Baxter.

The division focuses on developing appropriate relationships with the institutions it monitors, to ensure that they’re managed effectively, Baxter says.