APRA proposes changes to life insurance data collection

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has proposed to change the way insurance data is collected, proposing that all data from life insurance be non-confidential.

The proposal would allow APRA to incrementally improve its life insurance statistical publications by incorporating more detailed product-level statistics and introducing a database version with some statistics available sooner, it said.

APRA's review of capital standards for general insurers and life insurers, which resulted in changes to the life insurance reporting framework, had caused it to consider which data collected under the new framework was non-confidential and publicly accessible.

APRA said determining that all life insurer data was non-confidential allowed it to align published data with that of individual insurers.

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It said over time it planned to publish statutory fund-level data and improve its insurance statistical publications to meet stakeholders' needs for more detailed and timely data.

Statistics for APRA-regulated insurers currently published in the half-yearly life insurance bulletin will be transferred to the life insurance institution-level statistics publication, and the half-yearly bulletin will cease to be published.

APRA said the move aligned Australian and international insurance standards and increased the breadth of statistics available to users, as well as increasing the timeliness and usefulness of data for life insurance industry analysis.