APRA has proposed publishing greater breadth of industry-aggregate data for the general insurance (GI) and life insurance (LI) sectors.

In a letter to industry today, APRA said it planned to determine all class of business data for GI and all product group data for LI as non-confidential, unless sensitive commercial reasons were determined.   

APRA said the initiative supported its strategic priority to increase the transparency of the data it collected and aligned with the Australian Government Public Data Policy Statement. It follows APRA’s December proposal to determine that data collected for its quarterly authorised deposit-taking institution publications should be considered non-confidential. 

By facilitating greater public access to this information, APRA wats to promote:

• competition, contestability and efficiency in the financial system; 
• innovative uses of data;
• greater consumer understanding and more informed public discussion of insurance-related issues;
• informed decision-making for all market participants, consultants, analysts and other users of the GI and LI statistical publications. 

As part of this latest consultation, APRA also proposed disclosing explanations from individual GIs and LIs about material revisions to, or big movements in, their data.

The industry aggregate data to be determined as non-confidential would be included in the Quarterly General Insurance Performance Statistics (QGIPS), the Annual General Insurance Claims Development Statistics (AGICDS), the Quarterly Life Insurance Performance Statistics (QLIPS) and the Life Insurance Supplementary Statistical Tables (LISST) from the second half of 2020. 

The six week consultation is open until March 20.