Probabilities of Banking Regulators and Treasuries Tested on Annual Data

The Australian banking regulator’s annual point-of-presence data release this week follows its chairman and Wayne Byles federal treasury secretary Jim Chalmers.

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (Apra) and the Treasury Department maintain a list of 149 bank sites that do not meet the legal definition of a branch under federal law.

Most of them have been misrepresented in government data by Australian and foreign owners for years.

Others, such as two National Australia Bank The Geelong regional site has been downgraded to no longer meet the legal definition of a bank branch in the last 12 months.

Both Byres and Chalmers have pledged that banking sites that do not offer cash services will not appear on official government branch lists. Byles said in his April Senate estimate, and Mr. Chalmers in his July written response to a question prepared for him by the Treasury Department.

Biles was questioned about cashless banks and other mistakes in regulators’ “authorized deposit-taking locations” (Adipop) April 6 database by Senator Malcolm Roberts.

senator roberts Asked:

“Will you ensure that all branches that do not accept and issue cash are downgraded to other (face-to-face) instead of continuing to appear as bank branches?”

Biles replied:

“I think that’s where they should have been reported already. If not, we need to make sure they are.”

Dr. Chalmers confirmed this on July 28, also in response to criticism that APRA is publishing inaccurate information and that the ADIPOP database allows banks to hide their branch footprints. .

first secretary james kellyon behalf of Dr. Chalmers,

National Australia Bank’s (NAB) proposed future ‘cashless bank branches’ do not meet the POP (Points of Presence) reporting definition of a branch.

If NAB goes ahead with its proposal, APRA expects these branches to be reclassified or removed from next year’s reporting.

The list of banks believed to be falsely reporting as offering in-person cash services includes 8 banks ANZ10 NAB, 2 waist pack, Commonwealth and 122 Rabobank site.

Another 217 Bendigo When Adelaide Bank/rural bank Sites that had been listed in the wrong classification since ADIPOP statistics were first published in 2001 have been quietly corrected prior to the October 2021 data release after the error was revealed. regional May of that year.

regional report:

Cash management is the biggest problem the town faces when it loses its last bank.

Unfortunately, we also rely on the APRA database for an accurate picture of local Australians’ access to cash services, a key factor recognized under the Australian Bankers Association overseen Branch Closure Protocol. I can not do it.

The measure adds to the APRA database, which surveyed regional banks by the Hawker Commission in 1999, and is one of the few safeguards that could be put in place to ensure that customers are not left without some form of over-the-counter service. was one. Cash deposit and withdrawal facilities.

Therefore, to be classified as a “branch” of a bank under federal law, a bank store must accept cash and other deposits (including business deposits) and provide change.

However, despite never meeting this requirement, Rural Bank (under Bendigo and Adelaide Bank from 2019 onwards) and Rabobank have since been listed in the APRA database and have since been listed in the Australian Rural Bank. Counted as a full-service retail bank with over 340 local sites. The Rural Bank case is nearly 20 years old.

under Financial Sector (Data Collection) Act 2001banks are required by law to accurately report to APRA which service channel category a site falls under, as defined by law.

They are responsible for paying fines of up to $11,000 for every instance of non-compliance each year.

Rabobank’s site is incorrectly listed from 2008, while some of ANZ’s sites can be traced back to 2012.

An APRA spokesperson confirmed that no action had been taken against Bendigo Bank and Adelaide Bank for misrepresenting their branch network.

No formal enforcement action has been taken in this regard.

Generally speaking, APRA considers a variety of factors when considering whether to take enforcement action, including factors such as the magnitude of the reporting error and whether it is cooperative and prompt in correcting any problems identified. Consider

The errors and subsequent corrections made public by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank represent a 40% change in the bank’s local branch network.

Despite the magnitude of this correction, which has also been made to historical data going back to when Bendigo Bank and Adelaide Bank fully absorbed Rural Bank into their network in 2018, the change was not disclosed by APRA. .

An APRA spokesperson said whether the 149 sites provided to APRA and Dr. Chalmers’ offices will appear in the correct service channel category in the next annual release of data scheduled for Wednesday, October 19. did not check.

She only said that if corrections were made, the revisions would be noted in the document.

It’s been 16 months since a long-standing error in APRA’s point-of-presence database was exposed, and banking regulators admitted they hadn’t verified information provided by banks prior to publication.

It’s been six months since Byres faced these errors in Congress and promised to make sure banking institutions’ service channels were correctly classified.

It has been three months since Dr. Chalmers confirmed in writing that a bank must offer face-to-face cash services in order to be considered a “branch” of a bank under government law. did.

The content of this year’s stronghold data speaks to the character of both these individuals and the current government.

It could go either way.

Dale Webster is the inauguration Receiver of the Walkley Foundation Grants for freelance journalism about the Australian region. She published independently under her own title, regional. You can follow Dale on Twitter @TheRegional_au.

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