How APRA caused the generation of super fund breach reports

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

14 April 2022

Superannuation funds have reported triggering “incident reports” by simply following specific instructions from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

The regulator insisted that the super funds respond to its consultation on Strengthening Financial Resilience in Superannuation via its APRA Connect portal and that is where the problems began.

According to the funds, instead of facilitating an ad hoc return, APRA Connect had been set up to treat the super funds’ submissions as if they were mandatory data reporting forms.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) said that, as a consequence, member funds were reporting receiving notifications advising they had breached APRA’s data reporting provisions.

“In a number of funds this triggered an incident report in fund’s governance, risk management and compliance function and caused a risk investigation,” ASFA told the regulator.

“As a perceived breach of a mandatory regulatory reporting requirement, often this matter was escalated up through the organisation, including in some instances to the board.”