Insurance technology provider BAIS is reminding brokers and insurers that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA) planned move to a new data collection solution has been put on hold.
Following its work as a member of the APRA Software Vendor Working Group, BAIS says APRA reports will continue to be submitted using the existing methods for now.
“Our brokers and underwriting agents had to submit their APRA report after the end of June and so we just wanted to put a reminder out that the changes that they’ve all been anticipating are not happening and they still need to do whatever they were doing previously for this round,” said Sheri Andrews (pictured), client services manager at BAIS.
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According to Andrews, APRA’s postponement to its new data collection date – said to be September “at the earliest” - was motivated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“They put it on hold because of COVID-19 and because, obviously, this affects all the financial services industry and there was so much extra pressure on everyone struggling business-wise, so they just said ‘look, let’s put this on hold’,” she explained.
“In their update to us, they said something along the lines of ‘I’m just giving the industry some space to deal with what’s going on with COVID-19’.’”
The move has helped relieve stress and pressure on the insurance sector, which has been riddled with crises from last summer’s horror bushfire season, to hailstorms and floods, and is now left to cope with COVID-19.
“From our point of view, it wasn’t as big a change… it was just we could put those developments and resources into other projects in the meantime, and then brokers and insurers can come back on to it when it resurrects again,” Andrews said.
Andrews confirmed that she’s received queries from brokers asking about the new process and change of date.
“We had a few queries from our client base saying, ‘what’s happening, do we need to do anything different?’. We just wanted to get on top of that and let them know,” she said.
“From their point of view, it probably is a little bit easier for them because they can just stick with what’s familiar for this round and they don’t have to worry about learning something new.”
APRA has not yet announced an official new date for its new data collection solution.
“I suspect they will announce something closer to September,” Andrews said. “I think even in September - I don’t know if they will necessarily jump straight back into it then because I don’t think the financial services industry is going to be stable enough by then - so it’s just a ‘wait and see’ to see when they are ready to start back up again.”
