APRA ‘captured by major banks’

The regulator in charge of pol­icing the nation’s entire banking sector had become a victim of “industry capture”.

Therese McCarthy Hockey from Deutsche Bank.

The regulator in charge of pol­icing the nation’s entire banking sector had become a victim of “industry capture” and was no more than a mouthpiece for the major banks, a global corporate governance expert claimed.

The Australian can reveal six of the nine executives running the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority are former senior banking executives, and three joined the executive within weeks of Malcolm Turnbull calling a royal commission into ­financial services in December last year.

APRA executives and their banking links.

Andrew Schmulow, a senior law lecturer at the University of Western Australia and a former senior research associate at the University of Melbourne School of Law, criticised a recent submission that APRA chairman Wayne Byres made to the royal commission.

Mr Byres, who has been with APRA since its creation in 1998, wrote to the royal commission saying banks were in the business of taking deposits and lending money, were entitled to do so at a profit and that their stability was in the national interest.

“I cannot find the vocabulary to express how gobsmackingly moronic these statements are,” Dr Schmulow said.

“No one is doubting or questioning for a second that banks are in the business of lending money, are entitled to make profits and should be very stable.

“But there is a difference between expecting to be repaid when making loans to making money rigging an interest rate market worth $2.2 billion a day.”

Dr Schmulow said evidence of bad behaviour by bank employees that had emerged before the commission was “bewildering” and “puts the predatory lending practices that emerged in the US after the GFC to shame”.

Mr Byres has declined to be interviewed by The Australian, and APRA spokesman Ben McLean has incorrectly told the paper previously it was illegal under the APRA Act for the entity to discuss its actions relating to super funds.

Having long opposed calls to do so, the Prime Minister announced the royal commission on December 14 last year.

In the same month, Westpac’s former executive general manager of risk analytics was appointed as APRA’s executive general manager, risk and data analytics and a former NAB executive general manager business banking was appointed APRA general manager, specialised institutions.

In January, Therese McCarthy Hockey, former chief executive of insurance giant Suncorp, which is due to go before the royal commission in September, became APRA’s executive general manager of strategy.

Dr Schmulow said governance dictated experts be appointed who did not have potential conflicts of interest.