Banks will have to make a more detailed disclosure each quarter, both regarding their capital adequacy and the make up of their capital, from the second half of this year.The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority released a consultation paper and draft prudential standard relating to so-called pillar 3 disclosures yesterday.APRA said the revised disclosure requirements "will, among other things, inform the market of the composition of ADIs' regulatory capital in a standard form that will allow market participants to compare the capital positions of banking institutions in different jurisdictions."The regulator said ADIs will be required to publish a reconciliation between their regulatory capital and financial statements. They will also need to disclose full details of the terms and conditions of each regulatory capital instrument, and a summary of these instruments, in a standard form.Pillar 3 disclosures cover credit risk and impairments as well as capital. In theory, they provide depositors and investors with standardised information on banks.However, not all banks and credit unions publish the data in an accessible form and there is little evidence they serve much use.One study, by Curtin University academic Andrew Reynolds (previously reported in Banking Day) found "the mandated disclosure of this data is uneven, sometimes unavailable and, by and large, poorly read."Reynolds wrote that "it has not been noticed, least of all by APRA, that some institutions are not reporting at all, others are missing important data, several are late and most are not disclosing all of the data on a consistent basis."