Retirement
APRA puts Westpac and subsidiaries in firing line
Westpac and two of its registered financial corporations have copped $1.5 million in fines from the prudential regulator for failing to meet legal obligations on the reporting of data.
APRA puts Westpac and subsidiaries in firing line
Westpac and two of its registered financial corporations have copped $1.5 million in fines from the prudential regulator for failing to meet legal obligations on the reporting of data.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) said it has served infringement notices on Westpac Banking Corp and its subsidiaries St.George Finance Holdings Ltd and Capital Finance Australia Ltd for breaches to requirements of the Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Act 2001 by failing to report data to APRA by the required deadlines.
APRA deputy chair John Lonsdale said that “access to accurate and timely data is critical for APRA to monitor effectively the safety and stability of the banking, insurance and superannuation sectors”.
“By issuing these infringement notices, APRA wants to send a strong message to industry that compliance with our reporting standards is mandatory and cannot be considered secondary to other business priorities,” he continued.
Under the terms of the infringement notices, APRA reported that it will require the Westpac entities to pay a cumulative penalty of $1,501,500.
This is the maximum financial penalty that APRA can issue for infringement notices under the collection of data legislation, it was reported.
According to the authority, Westpac was up to 20 days late in filing reports for the month ending 31 March 2019 under the economic and financial statistics program, which were due on 1 May 2019.
St.George and Capital Finance Australia are alleged to have missed the same deadline by up to 37 days and were up to 28 days late in submitting their reports for the month ending 30 April 2019.
“Failure to submit monthly or quarterly returns within the time frames specified by APRA’s reporting standards is a strict liability offence,” the regulator noted.
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