The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) will launch a series of new superannuation data releases from September 2022, further improving the quality and breadth of information available to industry stakeholders.
The releases represent a key milestone in APRA’s Pension Data Transformation (SDT), a multi-year project to improve industry practices and improve outcomes for pension fund members through increased transparency .
Quarterly and annual releases will include new and expanded data on an industry, fund and product basis. The expanded data, captured as part of the new superannuation reporting standards, will include fee and cost information, asset allocation and performance data for all investment products and options, as well as information on insurance agreements, expenses and member demographics.
APRA member Margaret Cole today said the releases would fill an important gap in the data available to fund members, beneficiaries, investors, government and the general public.
“The improved data will enable industry stakeholders to more effectively assess pension fund risks, operations, performance and effectiveness. It will promote industry best practices through comparability and peer review, and the sharing of key metrics will lead to greater accountability of pension administrators.
“This is an important development in our work to increase transparency in the pensions industry – but we’re not done yet. We will continue to improve the information available to stakeholders during the next phases of the superannuation data transformation project,” she said.
The first of the new releases will be released in September and will cover aggregated quarterly data on industry structure and profile, member demographics and investments. Quarterly releases covering product-level data will be launched in Q4 2022. Annual industry, fund and product data releases will be released in early 2023.
APRA has consulted extensively with industry on publications and confidentiality. A copy of the SDT Publications and Confidentiality response document is available on the APRA website at: Consultation on superannuation data publications and privacy – Phase 1 Breadth.
