Cbus not out of woods on APRA scrutiny

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

28 February 2025

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has made clear that big industry fund Cbus remains under investigation with regard to the appropriateness of its expenditures and that other superannuation funds are also facing scrutiny.

Appearing before Senate Estimates, APRA deputy chair, Margaret Cole, reassured NSW Liberal Senator, Andrew Bragg, that $370,000 spent by Cbus celebrating its birthday would be picked up as part of APRA’s recently-announced enforcement investigation into the fund.

“It Is a matter under inquiry,” she said. “We placed some license conditions on Cbus last year requiring them to have an independent third party report on the fitness and propriety of directors and certain expenditure payments.”

She said that Deloitte had subsequently reported and that, as consequence, APRA had entered into a court-enforceable undertaking with Cbus on “various work that needs to improve operational risk and controls around expenditure”.

“Also, they have produced a remediation plan for the recommendations of the Deloitte Report,” she said.

“Also as part of those matters we took the unusual step of announcing we had started an enforcement investigation under our enforcement powers,” Cole said. “I am going to say little but about that but it goes to Cbus approach to expenditure management.”

“Deloitte found insufficient evidence in the sample areas they looked at and that’s exactly what we’re testing in investigations we’re carrying out.

Cole noted that the APRA investigation involved “aspects of expenditure wider than Deloitte report” with Cbus’ approach to expenditure management under investigation generally

Cole and APRA chair, John Lonsdale, highlighted the fact that the regulator had developed its own enforcement capability and, though modest, was prepared to use it.

Cole also made clear that APRA was using the data it collects to query the expenditures of other funds.

“We have published a lot of expenditure data and in the context of that we have given messaging in speeches on how we are going to proceed on cases that need following up because those expenditure are unusual and how they might fit with the Best Financial Interests Duty (BFID),” she said.

“APRA has been building an enforcement capability for some time now – we have the capability to pursue some enforcement cases.”