Strategic Industry Reference Group minutes - Monday 21 September 2020

Attendee List

Action List (New or Carried Forward)

1. Welcome, minutes & actions (Sean Carmody)

Sean Carmody welcomed members of the group and confirmed the meeting objectives.

Noted changes to membership:

• ABS - Amanda Seneviratne replaces Paul Roberts.

Minutes of the 19 February 2020 meeting were accepted.

2. Conflicts of interest (Sean Carmody)

None declared.

3. APRA’s Strategy and data priorities (Sean Carmody, Alison Bliss)

Sean Carmody reflected on the impacts of COVID-19 on both APRA and industry and the significant response made across the board to address the global pandemic.   He noted that these impacts were considered in APRA’s Strategy and reprioritisation. 

Alison Bliss and Michael Murphy provided an overview of data collections going forward. Key points:

• Industry consultations have continued whilst APRA Connect has been on hold.
• Consultations have been in-line with the principles to collect more granular data, through greater automation and fit-for-purpose submission channels. Future consultations will leverage the test environment for APRA Connect however current consultations continue to be iterative.
• DII, PHI, Super and ADI Credit quality and Operational Risk collections are being designed for implementation on APRA Connect, they will not go live on D2A
• There was a discussion about current indicative timeline for implementation of new collections.
• APRA is cognisant of regulatory burden and will endeavour to take account of impacts in the approach taken for both data collections and implementation of APRA Connect

4. Revised approach for APRA Connect (Doug Jenkins, Daniel Hunt)

Doug Jenkins has been appointed the GM for delivery of the APRA Connect project within APRA he provided introductory remarks.

Daniel Hunt gave an overview of the APRA Connect project to enable future data collections.

Key points:

• APRA Connect is a key enabler of future data collections and remains aligned to APRA’s priority to transform data-enabled decision-making. 
• Whilst the project was shuttered, a core team continued to work on the system build and testing.
• APRA is beginning a 3-month re-plan exercise during which the APRA Connect project will adapt and align project deliverables and timelines to consider APRA’s own readiness and business priorities as well as the industry readiness to ensure a clear and achievable approach and timeline

A proposed timeline and approach were shared with key dates being:

• June 2021 – APRA Connect test environment live
• September 2021 – Commencement of APRA Connect with all entities submitting entity information as well as Super and PHI data collections
• March 2022 – New ADI collections and the capability for FAR
• Timing of migration of ADI current D2A collections to APRA Connect remains undecided.

5. Engagement with industry – open discussion

Sean Carmody invited open discussion on the briefing and proposed approach for APRA Connect. 

Key points of discussion:

• Regarding proposed timelines – Superannuation industry experiences busy times around June end which is at the same time as the test environment release, ADI – indicated off quarter implementation preferable.
• A three-month test window may not be sufficient, especially for Superannuation as the Superannuation collection itself is also new.
• Industry will need artefacts to enable readiness work to be undertaken, this is a clear dependency for industry.
• Standing up teams will be expensive and more difficult in the new way of working post COVID-19.
• Entitles that choose to go to market for technical solutions will be constrained in their ability to be ready in time for test and go-live.
• Consultation currently occurring in Superannuation is void of technical implementation details, it is seen as spreadsheet-based conversation rather than thinking about the future data collection. There needs to be a shift in the conversation.
• Suggested to de-couple data payload testing with connectivity testing. 

Action:

APRA to engage with Hans van Daatselaar and others on how the SDT consultation could shift to focus on technical discussion of future data reporting formats (i.e. away from Excel collections).

6. Other Business

There was no other business.

The date for the next SIRG meeting will be confirmed by email.