The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is proposing to publish data on general insurance handled by brokers.

Both APRA and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have been collecting data on brokers since December 2009.

Some of this was published in the June 2010 edition of APRA’s Half Yearly General Insurance Bulletin.

It now proposes to publish half-yearly figures on the business brokers place with APRA-regulated insurers, Lloyd’s underwriters and unauthorised foreign insurers (UFI).

The discussion paper on the proposal says the data will be based on the Form 701 submitted by brokers, but it is looking at detailed information on class of business, the geographical region of UFIs and exemption details such as class of atypical risk.

The statistics would include both broker business and gross written premium for direct business.

Brokers would have to agree to the data being published if confidentiality issues are raised under the Corporations Act.

APRA is saying the industry, regulators, policymakers and the public will benefit from more data and it will improve the quality and impartiality of information available.

Submissions on the proposed data collection have to be submitted to APRA by July 12. The regulator is then planning to release the first statistics later this year.