Further regulation a certainty - APRA


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Australia’s financial institutions cannot expect to be excluded from any global tightening of regulations despite Australia having weathered the global financial crisis better than most countries, according to the chairman of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), John Laker.
Laker has told a Sydney financial services conference that Australia’s financial institutions need to recognise that they will ultimately be judged against global standards.
“It would be curious indeed for our financial institutions to promote their strengths to the marketplace while at the same time shying away from global benchmarks,” he said. “Investors will not allow that to happen.”
Laker said there could be no unilateral declaration of independence from global reform but added that APRA would be working to ensure that Australian financial institutions “did not bear the unnecessary brunt of global solutions to problems they themselves have avoided”.
“We will be consulting fully before any changes to our prudential framework are implemented and we will make sure that any unique characteristics of our financial system are taken into account,” he said.
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