APRA has deferred a series of capital adequacy reforms, pushing implementation dates out from next year and the following year to 2023 and beyond.APRA said Australian ADIs were well-capitalised and meeting "unquestionably strong" benchmarks - in the midst of a fevered social and economic crisis."Today's announcements do not impact the level of capital ADIs are required to hold, but rather defer adjustments to the re-allocation of capital across various portfolios," APRA said in a statement.Implementation of the capital adequacy standard (APS 110), which includes the introduction of a capital floor, new leverage ratio requirements and improvements to the transparency, comparability and flexibility of the capital framework, has been put off from January 2022 to January 2023.Revised standards APS 112 and APS 113, which cover the standardised approach to credit risk and the internal ratings-based approach to credit risk, have been put off from January 2022 to January 2023.A new standardised measurement of operational risk (APS 115) has been deferred from January next year to January 2023 for banks using the advanced measurement approach to operational risk, and from January 2022 to January 2023 for all other ADIs.Banks currently using the advanced measurement approach will be able to opt-in to the new standardised approach earlier if they want to.Changes to capital adequacy covering market risk (APS 116) have been put back from January 2023 to January 2024.APS 117, which deals with interest rate risk in the banking book, has been put back from January 2022 to January 2023.And APS 330, which deals with public disclosures, has been put back from January 2022 to January 2023.Yesterday's announcement follows APRA's decision earlier this month to give banks approval to use their capital buffers to fund lending. APRA said this would apply especially for banks using the Reserve Bank's new term funding facility.APRA said that over the past decade banks have built up substantial capital buffers, "typically maintaining capital levels well above minimum regulatory requirements".In 2017, it set benchmark capital targets to enable them to be regarded as unquestionably strong. For the four major banks this benchmark requires them to have a common equity tier 1 ratio of at least 10.5 per cent of risk weighted assets (less for smaller banks).At the end of last year the CET1 ratio of the banking system was 11.3 per cent.APRA said: "Provided banks are able to demonstrate they can continue to meet their various minimum capital requirements, APRA would not be concerned if they were not meeting the additional benchmarks announced in 2016 during the period of disruption caused by COVID-19."