APRA chairman Wayne Byres, flanked by his senior management team, yesterday fronted the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics at Parliament House, CanberraByres was keen to emphasise the work the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has done in the last year. For a start, there's been APRA's work in making sure capital requirements for Australia's banking system start to match up with the Financial System Inquiry's 'unquestionably strong' objective. "There is more work to do to achieve this objective, but importantly there's now more certainty for the industry about the ultimate destination for strong capital levels and the time to achieve it," Byres said.Byres was especially pleased with the macroprudential measures APRA has taken on slowing investor loan growth and reducing high loan-to-valuation lending. "Our most recent benchmark [was] for interest only lending to remain below 30 per cent of total new lending, [and] looks like it has been comfortably achieved overall," he said.He reminded the committee of legislation that is in the pipeline to improve accountability in the banking system (the BEAR regime), as well measures regarding non-ADI lenders, and use of the term 'bank'.   "All of those issues were on the radar when we last appeared before this Committee," Byers said, before adding more developments to the list - the main items being:•    lifting operational governance practices of superannuation trustees, including initial consultation on proposed changes to the superannuation prudential framework, with a view to releasing a detailed package of draft standards and guidance in the next month or so; and•    a prudential inquiry into governance, culture and accountability within the Commonwealth Bank: "This is already underway, following on from a series of incidents at the bank, which have severely damaged its reputation and public standing," Byres said, adding under questioning that the final report into the CBA was due on 30 April, "and we know everyone will want to see it, so we intend to release it as quickly as we can".This decision was questioned severely by committee member Julie Banks, who asked what was going to be achieved by essentially doubling up on other inquiries.Committee chair Sarah Cunningham noted that Westpac has announced a further tightening up on how they assess living expenses, and observed: "this appears to have been a direct reaction to what came out in the Royal Commission, not through anything that APRA did."Byers countered by reminding the committee that "in the latter part of 2016 we sent auditors into the larger institutions to see how well their processes were working and where the remaining gaps were. As a result of that a range of issues were identified."We are about to embark in a follow up range of reviews to check that what the banks have said they would do has been delivered."The deputy chair Matt Thistlethwaite took over, and argued that these "speed limits" stifled competition as the macropru measured pushed up costs at the major banks but borrowers cannot go to smaller competitors as they were prevented from growing their books