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Australian regulators weekly wrap — Monday, 17 January 2022

By Liam Hennessy posted 16-01-2022 08:22

  

Keeping on top of the latest financial services regulatory & compliance trends?

Investing time in your professional development within a rapidly changing financial services industry is challenging. To meet that challenge, the Australian regulators weekly wrap is designed to keep you at forefront of your practice by quickly setting out the top 5 developments from the past week, analysis and practical considerations for the future.

Never miss an update by signing up to receive emails here or by following me on LinkedIn here. You can also access past editions of the Australian regulators weekly wrap by clicking here.

  1. Liquidity facility (APRA): APRA has issued a letter to banks announcing the aggregate Committed Liquidity Facility has reduced to $102 billion on 1 January 2022 from $140 billion on 10 September 2021.Since January 2015, those ADIs to which APRA applies the Basel III liquidity standards have been required to hold high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) sufficient to withstand a 30-day period of stress under the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) requirement. Apart from government securities, the only other significant assets recognised as HQLA are liabilities of the Reserve Bank; namely, banknotes and ES balances. The Basel III standards allow jurisdictions to use an alternative treatment for holdings in the stock of HQLA when there is insufficient supply of HQLA. The Committed Liquidity Facility is the Reserve Bank and APRA’s alternative treatment and, under this arrangement, certain ADIs are able to use a contractual liquidity commitment from the Reserve Bank towards meeting their LCR. The letter is available on the APRA website here.

Thought for the future: the US SEC is very public about how it financially rewards whistleblowers — see here, for example. We do not have the same system in Australian — though it was considered recently — but I think we can expect ASIC to continue to be active encourage whistleblowers to come forward this year under the new Corporations Act regime.

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