From Martin North [my emphasis]:
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has released its response to the first round of consultation on proposed changes to the capital framework for authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs).
The package of proposed changes, first released in February last year, flows from the finalised Basel III reforms, as well as the Financial System Inquiry recommendation for the capital ratios of Australian ADIs to be ’unquestionably strong’.
ADIs that already meet the ‘unquestionably strong’ capital targets that APRA announced in July 2017 should not need to raise additional capital to meet these new measures. Rather, the measures aim to reinforce the safety and stability of the ADI sector by better aligning capital requirements with underlying risk, especially with regards to residential mortgage lending.
APRA received 18 industry submissions to the proposed revisions, and today released a Response Paper, as well as drafts of three updated prudential standards: APS 112 Capital Adequacy: Standardised Approach to Credit Risk; the residential mortgages extract of APS 113 Capital Adequacy: Internal Ratings-based Approach to Credit Risk; and APS 115 Capital Adequacy: Standardised Measurement Approach to Operational Risk.
The Response Paper details revised capital requirements for residential mortgages, credit risk and operational risk requirements under the standardised approaches, as well as a simplified capital framework for small, less complex ADIs. Other measures proposed in the February 2018 Discussion Paper, as well as improvements to the transparency, comparability and flexibility of the ADI capital framework, will be consulted on in a subsequent response paper due to be released in the second half of 2019.
After taking into account both industry feedback and the findings of a quantitative impact study, APRA is proposing to revise some of its initial proposals, including:
- for residential mortgages, some narrowing in the capital difference that applies to lower risk owner-occupied, principal-and-interest mortgages and all other mortgages;
- more granular risk weight buckets and the recognition of additional types of collateral for SME lending, as recommended by the Productivity Commission in its report on Competition in the Financial System; and
- lower risk weights for credit cards and personal loans secured by vehicles.
The latest proposals do not, at this stage, make any change to the Level 1 risk weight for ADIs’ equity investments in subsidiary ADIs. This issue has been raised by stakeholders in response to proposed changes to the capital adequacy framework in New Zealand. APRA has been actively engaging with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand on this issue, and any change to the current approach will be consulted on as part of APRA’s review of Prudential Standard APS 111 Capital Adequacy: Measurement of Capital later this year.
APRA’s consultation on the revisions to the ADI capital framework is a multi-year project. APRA expects to conduct one further round of consultation on the draft prudential standards for credit risk prior to their finalisation. It is intended that they will come into effect from 1 January 2022, in line with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s internationally agreed implementation date. An exception is the operational risk capital proposals for ADIs that currently use advanced models: APRA is proposing these new requirements be implemented from the earlier date of 1 January 2021.
APRA Chair Wayne Byres said: “In setting out these latest proposals, APRA has sought to balance its primary objectives of implementing the Basel III reforms and ‘unquestionably strong’ capital ratios with a range of important secondary objectives. These objectives include targeting the structural concentration in residential mortgages in the Australian banking system, and ensuring an appropriate competitive outcome between different approaches to measuring capital adequacy.
“With regard to the impact of risk weights on competition in the mortgage market, APRA has previously made changes that mean any differential in overall capital requirements is already fairly minimal. APRA does not intend that the changes in this package of proposals should materially change that calibration, and will use the consultation process and quantitative impact study to ensure that is achieved.
“It is also important to note that the proposals announced today will not require ADIs to hold any capital additional beyond the targets already announced in relation to the unquestionably strong benchmarks, nor do we expect to see any material impact on the availability of credit for borrowers,” Mr Byres said
As Deep T has noted previously, the claim that Australian ADI’s capital positions are “unquestionably strong” is a myth, with Deep T instead describing them as “unquestionably average” (see here and here).
Specifically, unquestionably strong is meant to represent Australian banks’ capital being in the top 25% of international bank peers. However, a true comparison of the major banks’ capital positions places them near the tail end of international banks.
In fact, Deep T places the total amount of undercapitalisation of Australia’s banks at close to $90 Billion, which represents “the burden being taken by the Australian taxpayer under the too big to fail doctrine”.
It’s amazing that only months after the Hayne Royal Commission found the banks guilty of irresponsible lending that Australia’s prudential regulator can: 1) lower the interest rate buffer on new mortgages; 2) lower smaller bank mortgage capital requirements; and 3) water down the bank capital framework.
APRA has clearly been corrupted.
