The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has released a discussion paper outlining proposals to change its statistical publications on authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADI).

APRA proposes to combine the quarterly bank and CUBS statistical publications into a quarterly ADI statistical publication which will incorporate statistics on capital adequacy, impaired facilities and credit union and building society liquidity.

The proposed combined publication will also include, for the first time, statistics for mutual banks or mutual ADIs .

Since September 2011, APRA has approved seven CUBS to use the word ‘bank’. As a consequence, these seven CUBS are now classified as banks in APRA’s statistical publication. Most credit unions and building societies are mutuals. The approval to use the word bank has therefore led to the emergence of ‘mutual banks’.

APRA proposes to publish selected aggregate statistics for mutual ADIs in the Quarterly ADI Performance Statistics. APRA proposes that a mutual (whether a bank, CUBS or ADI) will be defined as an institution where each member is issued one share and each member has one vote.

Mutual ADIs currently comprise mutual banks as well as all mutual CUBS. Almost all CUBS are mutual institutions. The small number of CUBS that do
not meet the definition of a mutual, would not be included in ‘mutual ADIs’.