Briefs: Australian support keeps Fiji bank sector low-risk, Regtech vendor heartened by APRA
Fiji's banking system poses "limited contingent liabilities" to the sovereign because its banks are likely to derive support from their parents rather than the government, a report from Moody's Investors Service has stated. The system consists of six banks, five of them foreign backed, with the local subsidiaries of two Australian banks - ANZ and Westpac (both rated Aa2) - accounting for just over half of total banking system assets. In the past, APRA has not prevented Australian banks from supporting troubled foreign operations if the parents are financially strong. Moody's assessed Fiji's banking indicators as sound, "though some pockets of risk may be emerging", including a sharp rise in house prices due to greater competition among banks and low interest rates. An array of new Australian Prudential Regulation Authority reporting requirements has resulted in banks being encouraged by global technology vendors to rethink their data architecture and to prepare for a future requiring a better grasp of data lineage and traceability. Abraham Teo, head of the regional regulatory policy team for technology vendor AxiomSL, told the AFR that APRA is at the forefront of global efforts to push banks to automate reporting and is the only regulator in Asia to have developed an "extensible business reporting language" taxonomy to formalise reporting standards.