APRA publishes Chair Wayne Byres' speech on role of business journalism

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has published a speech delivered by Chair Wayne Byres this afternoon to the Walkley Business Journalism Awards Finalists Announcement.

In Creating a balanced scorecard, Mr Byres talked about the important role business and financial journalists play in serving the community.

Mr Byres’ comments included: 

• "The business media’s role in airing the debate on these sorts of issues is essential. The complexity of much of what occurs in the financial world means many people rely on journalists to attend the announcements, analyse the documents, conduct the interviews, seek out alternate views, then tell their audience what has happened and what it means."
   
• "As the public’s primary source of information on many complex but important economic and financial matters, business journalists therefore have a critical obligation to present audiences with information that is not just accurate, but also helps them with context and perspective. That’s especially the case with the financial sector, which is heavily reliant on trust and confidence to operate safely and effectively."
   
• "The perception that customers seldom get fair treatment or positive outcomes when accessing essential financial services is not just bad for the institutions – it can be harmful to the interests of the community itself if people are wary of taking advantage of products and services on offer for fear of poor treatment." 
   
• "The nature of what APRA does means a degree of discretion will always be necessary on our part. There are legal restrictions on what we can say publicly about the institutions we supervise, while disclosing other information could undermine an entity’s financial soundness." 
   
• "Nevertheless, we at APRA have made it one of our strategic priorities to communicate more and more frequently to improve the understanding of what we do and why we do it."

The full speech can be found on the APRA website at: APRA Chair Wayne Byres - Speech to the Walkley Business Journalism Awards Finalists Announcement.