APRA fronted the Senate Economics Legislation Committee - better known as the Senate estimates committee - yesterday and covered a grab-bag of topics, with the overarching theme that this year will be a much tougher brand of regulation.APRA and ASIC will need to be tougher, in order to justify a raft of new powers. But the  prudential regulator's chairman Wayne Byres, while acknowledging the potential change in APRA's culture, was clear that the fundamentals of its role will not change."I should note that although the Royal Commission has assigned some important new responsibilities to APRA, our primary responsibility remains the safety and stability of the financial system, to protect the financial well-being of the Australian community," he told the committee. Byres was asked to comment on the readiness of the major banks ahead of the start date for the consumer data right regime. This is a matter of systems readiness among the large banks, Byres advised the committee. "They have an obligation to meet [their readiness deadline], and I have no information that they will not get there or they are materially under-prepared, but it will take a lot of work [to launch open data on time]."He was willing to let deadlines slip though: "We all want this to go well, and if in the interest of getting it right means some of the timetables are adjusted, I'd much rather that."The APRA team was asked if the regulator had been active enough in guarding super fund members, in particular, against the worst of the industry excesses disclosed via the royal commission.Byres said he "rejected the proposition that APRA has done nothing to protect superannuation members", pointing among other measures to the consolidation in the sector, down from over 460 funds in 2008 to around 200 this year."We will be able to up the ante - the two key pieces of armoury that have been missing in APRA's oversight of superannuation," he said echoing a promise made the previous evening by ASIC's deputy chair, John Lonsdale, that ASIC was willing to change its culture and be more willing to go to court.Lonsdale confirmed that the banking royal commission had referred 12 cases to APRA. Byres explaining that none of these cases were straightforward, even with new powers.APRA is not launching into testing its new powers in a rush, though. Lonsdale explained that APRA is running an enforcement review, which it commenced in November, with a draft report to be sent to members by the end of the month and a final report at the end of March.APRA is looking at what other regulators are doing in terms of how they are using coercive powers, with the aim of learning to use its own new powers effectively from the start.The senators were nevertheless keen to hear about progress in applying some of the new rules, notably the Bank Executive Accountability Regime rules. Byres said that when these are finally extended to all ADIs, "there will be 1500 bank executives that will be