13 December 2021
The ABA remains very supportive of the Treasury’s ongoing efforts to improve the technology neutrality of the Treasury portfolio and look forward to further engagement on this, and subsequent, tranches of legislative change.
Industry’s main comments regard allowing:
• (under National Credit Code (NCC)) the ‘publish and notify’ and ‘in any other way agreed to’ methods of communications which are permitted under the Corporations Act;
• more than one address to be used at any given time, which may be appropriate depending on the type of communications; and,
• communications via secure portals instead of an email address, as securely housing certain notifications and communications within the credit providers (CP) information system, where it can be retrieved by customers after appropriate authentication, better balances the need for accessibility, security and technology neutrality.
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The Australian Banking Association (‘ABA’) welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Review of the Reserve Bank of Australia. The ABA notes the significant role of Australia’s central bank in delivering good economic outcomes for the nation. We support the ongoing independence of the Reserve Bank of Australia in executing its mandate.
The ABA’s responses to the panel’s questions in the Issues Paper (15 September 2022) raises these key points:
– We consider the three objectives to be appropriate, noting there may be an opportunity to update the expression of the objectives in Section 10(2) of the Reserve Bank Act (1959).
– We see opportunities for Reserve Bank of Australia (‘the RBA’ or ‘the Bank’) to augment its communications to explain the complexities underlying the decisions as well as greater explanation of the trade-offs made between the Bank’s objectives.
– We see the independence of the RBA as critical to ensuring a well-functioning economy.
Australian Banks support the intent of this global agreement to address the risks and leverage the opportunities arising from the digitalisation of the global and domestic economy. The ABA recommends that where possible, Australia’s implementation of the proposes measures should align with existing reporting and administrative requirements, and should be consistent with international approaches to ensure a streamlined and effective implementation.
The ABA considers the ASIC industry funding model is broadly meeting its objectives. The funding model promotes equitable outcomes across the financial services industry and for the community, by ensuring that entities that create the need for regulation bear the costs rather than taxpayers. However, there is scope to increase the transparency of the ASIC funding and improve some aspects of the reporting mechanisms.