The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) today released the results of the banking points of presence data collection which provides a detailed picture of the face-to-face and electronic service points made available by authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) as at June 2002.
APRAs data substantially improves the quality of information available to the community and industry observers.
The APRA "Points of Presence Return" requires banks, building societies, credit unions and other ADIs to describe their services, identifying those offering a branch level of service, and to provide a list of service channels by location. Criteria relevant to availability of services are identified according to town or suburb, postcode and state.
While not core to its prudential mandate, the Points of Presence Return is a response by APRA to calls from the community and government for better information about access to banking services, particularly in regional and rural areas, said Dr Steve Davies, Head of Statistics at APRA.
The new collection is a substantial improvement on the older "Branches and Agencies" survey in use prior to 2001. The focus is now on the provision of a broad range of banking services, he said.
The data set discloses the location of service points for each deposit-taker, providing improved information for analysing access to financial services than has been previously available.
Data for 2001 and 2002 was analysed using the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) developed by the National Centre for Social Applications of Geographic Information Systems (GISCA) for the Department of Health and Ageing. The index provides a classification of postcodes according to accessibility and was used, where possible, to analyse the movement in the numbers from 2001 to 2002.
APRA collected Giropost numbers directly from Australia Post, which supplied a more accurate representation of the relevant financial service points.
All information collected by APRA from ADIs is available on APRAs website (www.apra.gov.au/Statistics/Points-of-Presence.cfm).
