5647.0.40.001 - Monthly Statistics for Corporations Registered under the Financial Corporations Act, Data Report, Mar 2001  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 23/05/2001   
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FINAL ISSUE


As a result of the review of Financial Corporations Act statistics, and after discussion with the Reserve Bank of Australia, the data service 5647.0.40.001 will no longer be released.


CHANGED LEGISLATION, COLLECTION AND PUBLICATION ARRANGEMENTS

On 5 April 2001, the Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Bill 2001 was introduced to Parliament. The new bill enables APRA to collect data from corporations that are currently registered under the Financial Corporations Act 1974 (FCA) in addition to other bodies in the financial sector that are currently reporting to APRA. If the bill is passed in Parliament, APRA will take over the role of collecting financial information of corporations which are currently registered under the FCA.

APRA, in conjunction with RBA and the ABS, is undertaking a review of the data collection and dissemination from these institutions, including the categorisation and size cutoffs for inclusion. Balance sheet, income and expenditure data is required for the compilation of economic statistics, and for prudential regulation. Other data currently released which is not required for these purposes, such as tables on financial operations, state dissections, maturity dissections, and interest rates, will not be produced. Remaining tables will be redesigned significantly to modernise and harmonise with other financial sector data and will be released by APRA.

A date for cutover to the new collection arrangements has not been agreed by the agencies concerned, but is expected to come into effect at the earliest for the December 2001 reference month. Summary data will continue to be published in the RBA Bulletin.


CHANGES TO SCOPE AND COVERAGE

Building societies and credit unions became authorised deposit-taking institutions on 1 July 1999 and are therefore not registered under the Financial Corporations Act. Accordingly, ABS Cat. no 5647.0.40.001, statistics for corporations registered under the Financial Corporations Act, does not include data on building societies (Tables 1-4) and credit unions (Tables 24-27) from July 1999 onwards.

From December 1999, a $50 million threshold was applied to processing returns from FCA-registered corporations. Legislation was passed in April 2000 exempting corporations with less than $50 million from reporting.

Tables 1 to 4, 24 to 27 and 34 to 35 are not published due to the fact that the relevant institutions are no longer required to report under the Financial Corporations Act.

In Table 28 data for Lending operations with residents (loans advanced and book debts purchased during period and Payments received during period) has changed significantly for October 2000, due to a change in reporting systems adopted by one company. Back series will be amended when data for these series is available.


CHANGES THIS ISSUE

Tables incorporate revisions by the RBA made to statistics for previous periods.


DATA AVAILABILITY

Summary statistics for Building Societies and Credit Unions as well as Financial Corporations Act institutions are published in the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Bulletin. For detailed statistics on Building Societies and Credit Unions, and, in due course, on FCA institutions, contact John Turner at Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) on phone (02) 9210 3274 or email john.turner@apra.gov.au. Alternatively, access APRA website (www.apra.gov.au).

The data provided by the Reserve Bank of Australia will be available in hardcopy format on request until APRA assumes data collection responsibilities. This is expected to occur for the reference month of December 2001.