The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has updated its guidance for general insurers on the reporting of large exposures.

Forms GRF 117.0 and GRF 117.0(G): Asset Concentration Risk Charge provide information about insurers’ concentration risks and exposures to various counterparties.

In a letter to insurers, the regulator says the forms contain free text fields for “name of counterparty”, “counterparty group name”, “ACN/ABN” and “description”.

“Due to the free text nature of these fields, different insurers have used slightly different wording,” the letter says. “This limits the comparability of submissions and the usefulness of the data to APRA’s supervision.”

It lists as examples the use of “Australian Government”, “Aus Govt” and “Commonwealth Govt”.

“To address this issue and to help insurers submit consistent data that is fit for analytical purposes, APRA has developed lists of standard wordings for two of these text fields: counterparty group name and exposure description.”

Click here for the letter, list of common counterparty groups and common exposure descriptions.