The Reserve Bank plans to add extra privacy safeguards to its reporting rules for issuers of residential mortgage-backed securities. Postcodes and some date fields will be removed from RMBS loan-level data that is made publicly available.Under amended rules, announced yesterday, postcode data in RMBS loan-level templates will be replaced by a broader Australian Bureau of Statistics statistically defined area, an area that is large enough to obscure the property location for borrower identification while retaining the analytical usefulness of the data.And some date fields will be reported in quarters, rather than using exact dates.Investors and researchers, as well as the RBA, have access to loan-level data. The RBA's aim is to balance the need for more comprehensive information about securitised assets with the need to protect borrowers' privacy.The RBA has also issued information requirements for issuers of commercial mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities. It said the transaction-level and security-level templates for CMBS and ABS are comparable with those finalised for RMBS issuers."Anonymised" loan level reporting is required for CMBS. Loan-level reporting is not required for ABS. However, a separate pool-level template will capture the general characteristics of the financial contracts backing securities.The cashflow waterfall template for RMBS will apply to both CMBS and ABS.The RBA is calling for comment on the draft reporting templates and the changes related to privacy. Comments due by October 28