SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's banking watchdog vowed to be tougher with the entities it oversees but needs more funds to carry out its work, its chairman said on Wednesday, after a government report recommended the regulator be more forceful and less discreet.
Australian Prudential (LON:PRU) Regulatory Authority (APRA) Chairman Wayne Byres told reporters on a conference call the regulator will need to work with the government to decide how to progress on recommendations from the review published late on Tuesday.
Byres could not provide the exact sum needed but said it "was not a trivial amount."
"The government has told us we can put a submission in (and) we certainly intend to do so," he said.
"We are quite lightly resourced, even with the resourcing that the government has announced," he added, referring to the federal government's move earlier this year to boost APRA's funding by A$150 million ($106 million).
The review, ordered by the government following a misconduct inquiry into the finance sector, accused APRA of being unwilling to challenge itself, slow to respond and tentative in addressing issues outside of traditional financial risks.
APRA's preference for working "behind the scenes" with the more than 500 companies it oversees limited its effectiveness, and the regulator needed to communicate about its work more publicly and forcefully, the report added.
Byres, who has been the APRA chairman since 2014, said the regulator may have focused too much on consistency, which "may have played out in terms of slower responses".
From now, he said, when it came to "naming and shaming, the general direction is to do more of that".
He pointed to a July 11 announcement that APRA was making three of Australia's biggest banks - Westpac Banking Corp (AX:WBC), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (AX:ANZ) and National Australia Bank Ltd (AX:NAB) increase their capital reserves due to concerns about non-financial risk management.
"Those are the kinds of things you can expect to see going forward," Byres added.