The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s quarterly industry performance reports will return next month in an “enhanced” format including data for the September and December quarters of last year and the first three months of this one.

APRA says the new presentation of its general and life statistics follows a consultation with stakeholders over the adoption of the new Australian Accounting Standards Board 17 Insurance Contracts standard.

The standard resulted in “significant changes” in the reporting framework for insurers, the regulator says.

“These changes have had an impact on the data presented in the quarterly insurance publications, which are based on now superseded reporting standards,” the regulator said. “APRA needs to revise the data presented in the impacted quarterly insurance publications to reflect the new reporting framework.

“APRA’s approach has been to ensure that, where possible, the enhanced quarterly insurance publications will provide the same level of data transparency as the existing publication suite.”

The regulator announced in August last year it was suspending the September quarter report because of changes under the accounting standard. It said at the time the release of the impacted publications would resume for the December 2023 quarter.

The regulator says submissions to its consultation on content revision and enhancement of data presentation were largely supportive.

However, some stakeholders raised concerns around APRA publishing confidential data. 

“APRA has strict procedures and processes in place to safeguard the release of confidential data across all its public releases, including statistical publications,” the regulator said. “APRA intends to consult at a later date on the confidentiality of data collected under the new insurance reporting standards.

“Until data collected under the new reporting standards have been determined non-confidential, APRA will apply the necessary protections to its insurance publications.”

The consultation received 12 submissions from insurers, industry bodies and other interested parties, including five that were confidential.

Click here for the public submissions.