APRA pushes for ‘more granular’ mortgage reporting

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has announced a proposal to enhance its Quarterly Authorised Deposit-taking Institution Property Exposures (QPEX) statistical publication from the December quarter 2019.

As part of its current QPEX publication, APRA provides aggregate data for residential and commercial property exposures, as well as new home loan approvals for banks, credit unions and building societies.  

APRA has stated that its proposed changes would incorporate “more detailed” data on residential property exposures and new housing loan approvals than in previous publications, while its reporting of commercial property exposures would remain unchanged.  

If approved, the new version of the publication will categorise loans based on the “predominant purpose of the funds”.

For example, to be considered an owner-occupied loan, the funds must be used for a residential property that is occupied or to be occupied by borrowers as their principal place of residence, which includes:

• dwellings and residential land that are vacant while under construction but that the borrower intends to occupy as a principal place of residence; and
• part-time residences that are the borrower(s) principal place of residence.

Using the same example, part-time residences that are not the borrower’s principal place of residence would be excluded from the owner-occupied category and reported as investment loans.

Further, the new version of the publication would use data based on “loans funded”, rather than “loans approved”, as previously. 

The “loans funded” data would therefore incorporate the total funds made available for the borrower to draw down, regardless of whether the funds are actually drawn down in reporting period.

APRA added that “more granular” information would also be provided on policy exceptions, which would split the previous “new loans approved outside serviceability policy” category into two separate categories – “exceptions to serviceability policy” and “serviceability verification waivers”.

The revised data publication will also include statistics for non-performing loans for each of the allotted categories, which includes:

• Owner-occupied
• Investment
• Interest-only
• Third-party originated
• Low-doc loans
• Loans to non-residents
• SMSF loans
• Loans for units or apartments
• Mortgages in possession
• Varying LVR bands

The regulator’s newly announced proposal follows the implementation of the Economic and Financial Statistics (EFS) data collection, which came into effect earlier this year – designed to better align with international reporting standards.

In May, APRA also opened consultation on proposals to capture lending volumes from the non-ADI sector “in a manner that allows direct comparisons to the ADI sector”.

The implementation of APRA’s latest proposals will be subject to a six-week public consultation period, which closes on 1 November 2019.

The revised statistics are expected to be released in March 2020.

[Related: APRA looks to broaden non-bank lending data collection]

Charbel Kadib is the news editor on the mortgages titles at Momentum Media.

Before joining the team in 2017, Charbel completed internships with public relations agency Fifty Acres, and the Department of Communications and the Arts.

You can email Charbel on: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.