First it was Bill Evans at Westpac, now it’s his CEO, Gail Kelly, at Fairfax:
Mrs Kelly joined the industry chorus warning that those regulators had to be mindful of the trade off between stability of the system and growth – in profits and lending and the economy.
She also weighed into the potential for the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) to use so-called macro-prudential measures to curb the booming lending market for property investors which is creating huge property price growth in hot spots in Sydney and Melbourne homes.
…Mrs Kelly is generally quite careful in her public comments around regulators or legislators said the bank is adopting a wait and see position on macro-prudential chances. Notably she said she believed the Reserve Bank of Australia and APRA would be sensible and moderate in their approach.
She said the regulators already employed macro-prudential tools such as stress testing and ‘they would probably like to stop at that set of tools’.
I’ve learned the hard way that one should never mistake what should happen with what is going to happen but all of that regulator smoke surely suggests more fire than that.
