The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) today launched its new quarterly flagship publication, APRA Insight. This is aimed at giving readers insight into the condition of Australia's financial institutions and the way APRA supervises them. Graeme Thompson, APRA's Chief Executive Officer, introduces the first issue with a column outlining APRA's supervisory responsibilities and powers over 85 per cent of the assets in Australia's finance system.

He says, "APRA's supervision is fundamentally concerned with helping to ensure that financial institutions are managed prudently and remain in sound condition, with the result that they can meet their obligations or promises.

"We describe APRA's approach to supervision - our philosophy - in the following words: 'forward-looking, primarily risk-based, consultative, consistent and in line with international best practice.'"

This introduction is followed by articles that:

• discuss prudential issues arising from electronic commerce in the finance sector;
• describe APRA's major Statistics Project that will provide a single, integrated system for data collection based on data-warehousing technology; and
• explain the new statistical tables and graphs that make up a major section of APRA Insight.

These tables and graphs focus primarily on the financial and risk characteristics - or prudential soundness - of APRA-supervised financial institutions. They emphasise comparisons across institutions, rather than time trends in industry aggregates. To provide meaningful comparisons, institutions are separated into broadly comparable peer groups. This new way of presenting data will be refined and expanded in future editions of APRA Insight.

For further information contact: Gloria Peterson
Public Affairs Manager
02 9210 3385