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APRA has released draft Prudential Standard CPS 230 Operational Risk Management for comment. CPS 230 will replace CPS 231: Outsourcing and CPS 232: Business Continuity, and the sector specific standards HPS 231, SPS 231 and SPS 232. What is operational resilience? Operational risk management analyses and defines risks associated with people, processes, and systems. Operational resilience defines the approach to managing operational risks.

Considering Australia’s significant fintech and financial sector experience, it’s no surprise Victoria’s recent Intersekt Festival focused on leveraging Australia’s fintech market to its full potential.

Following the announcement of the CPS tripartite audits in November 2020, APRA began issuing notices to regulated entities to undergo the independent assessment. The reviews are part of APRA’s four year strategy to increase the rigor of compliance with CPS 234: Information Security.

The ATO has recently announced that they have now re-commenced issuing requests to release excess contributions and other charges for superannuation fund members who did not make an election on how they would like to treat their excess non-concessional contributions for prior financial years.

Following industry consultation released late last year APRA recently finalised revisions to Prudential Standard APS 220 Credit Risk management, effective September 2022, to include a new Attachment C - Macroprudential policy: credit measures. Under the new requirements, ADIs must be operationally prepared to implement certain macroprudential policy measures, if needed to avoid potential barriers to timely and effective implementation.

With the 2022 financial year coming to a close, private health insurers face a number of considerations in regulation and their year-end financial reporting.

We discussed some of the key findings of our Women in Business research with female industry leaders across our global Grant Thornton network, exploring how the banking sector can keep the momentum going to attract, retain and nurture women to build a more inclusive future.

Last week, APRA Deputy Chair John Lonsdale delivered a speech at the COBA CEO and Director Forum. Reflecting on the history of the mutual banking sector, Lonsdale highlighted APRA’s recent review of mutuals exiting the industry and their performance 12 months prior to their exit. It brought to the fore several issues that could lead to potential future mutual exits, such as poor performance on cost management, lending growth and profitability. APRA highlighted three core priorities to “support a strong, stable mutual sector”, being: • Cyber risk, including CPS 234 reviews • Risk culture • Contingency and continuity frameworks

APRA’s feedback focuses on ensuring recovery from high-impact cyber-attacks. Boards are encouraged to seek assurance on the entity’s likely ability to recover from a high-impact cyber-attack.

IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts was issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (Board) on 18 May 2017. The Board published some amendments to IFRS 17, including a deferral of the effective date of IFRS 17 by two years, with entities required to apply IFRS 17 for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2023.

The ATO has recently undertaken a number of Income tax, Transfer Pricing, GST and R&D reviews of Fintechs across the ‘Top 1000’ and the ‘Medium and Emerging’ markets, focusing on business models such as online lenders, neo banks, buy now pay later providers, and peer-to-peer lenders. Based on the findings, the ATO has identified a number of key risk areas.

On Tuesday 23 November 2021, APRA released commentary following the conclusion of its pilot initiatives – the tri-partite audit and technology resilience data collection.