APRA announces 2023 Brian Gray Scholarship recipients

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has announced the four recipients of the 2023 Brian Gray Scholarship. 

The Brian Gray Scholarship program was established by APRA and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in September 2002 in memory of Brian Gray, APRA's former Executive General Manager, Policy Research and Consulting, who spent more than two decades shaping regulatory policy in the financial area in his roles at the RBA and APRA. 

The recipients of the 2023 Brian Gray Scholarship and their areas of study are:

• Robert Annabel – PhD candidate, School of Risk and Actuarial Studies, University of New South Wales;
   
• Rhys Creer – Honours candidate, Bachelor of Economics, University of Sydney;
   
• Felix Plunkett – Honours candidate, Bachelor of Commerce (Economics and Finance), University of Melbourne; and
   
• Anna-Sophia Zahar – Honours candidate, Bachelor of Economics, University of Sydney.

Under this Scholarship program, the recipients will devote a substantial amount of time to an agreed research topic and present their findings to APRA and the RBA upon completion of their research. The scholarship recipients will be researching the following topics: 

• How institutional investors' active ownership (or stewardship) impacts the companies in their investment portfolios – Robert Annabel;
   
• Determining the optimum level of the superannuation guarantee at each age that maximises total lifetime utility – Rhys Creer;
   
• The effect of Basel III and increased banking reserve ratios on Australian asset prices – Felix Plunkett; and
   
• Rates and Redistribution: How Tax and Transfer Progressivity Affects Monetary Policy Transmission – Anna-Sophia Zahar.

The scholarship program, jointly funded by APRA and the RBA, supports up to four scholarships each year to the value of $15,000 each. The purpose of the scholarship is to support research students pursuing careers in finance, economics, actuarial science, econometrics, statistics, or related disciplines. It is open to Australian and New Zealand citizens and permanent residents completing their honours year or postgraduate studies on topics of relevance to APRA and/or the RBA, broadly. Applications for the 2024 scholarship will open in December 2023.

More information on the Brian Gray Scholarship is available on the APRA website at: Brian Gray Scholarship program.