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In October, APRA Executive Board Member Suzanne Smith delivered a speech at the ICA Conference 2025. In her speech, Suzanne Smith urged the insurance industry to embrace resilience, innovation, and leadership as core pillars to future proof the industry, at a time of heightened scrutiny around operational resilience, consumer trust, and the evolving risk landscape driven by climate change and artificial intelligence.

While APRA has acknowledged the achievements of member-owned and not-for-profit funds to-date, it also noted Boards must do more to ensure long-term sustainability of their organisations.

APRA has proposed eight updates to governance and fit and proper requirements for banks, insurers, and superannuation trustees. Businesses must proactively adapt their governance practices to align with these enhanced standards.

The new prudential standards for the private health insurance industry which commenced on 1 July 2023 have significantly changed how capital adequacy is determined for insurers and have been implemented to improve alignment with APRA’s insurance capital framework, consistent with international best practice.

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.

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.

In the words of Richard Olswang, Prudential Global IFRS 17 Actuarial Lead, IFRS 17 has the potential to be bigger than Solvency II and with APRA seeking an industry update as early as August, it’s important to understand the changes and the implications.

APRA released a consultation paper on ARS 210 – Liquidity, in order to align liquidity reporting with the revised prudential standards APS 210 – Liquidity.