The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) will probably need an increase of up to 20% in funding to help it take up the reform measures made in an independent capability review.

APRA Chairman Wayne Byres made the assessment at an estimates hearing last month with the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.

“If I'm thinking off the top of my head, it might be somewhere 10 to 20 [%] sort of number,” Mr Byres said.

“The areas that we have called out would be more supervision effort in superannuation, more on cyber-related risks in the financial system, a broader upskilling of our staff and on the resolution piece of our work…our crisis preparedness resolution-type work.

“They were the areas called out by the capability review, where they essentially said we should be doing more than we currently are, so that's the discussion we're having about what resources we would need to do more and do it more quickly.”

The capability review chaired by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel was highly critical of APRA and made 24 suggestions to improve deficiencies.