The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has released Prudential Standard APS 910 Financial Claims Scheme (APS 910) that implements some of the operational requirements of the Financial Claims Scheme (FCS) for authorised deposit-taking institutions.

Separately, ASIC has issued a class order to update the telephone number in the Corporations Regulations 2001 that authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) and insurers must disclose for consumers to call if they have inquiries about the Financial Claims Scheme. The new number is 1300 55 88 49.

The FCS was established in October 2008. It is designed to protect depositors (up to a defined amount) and to provide them with timely access to their deposits in the event that their ADI becomes insolvent and is declared to be subject to the FCS.

The key requirements of the prudential standard include:

• ADIs will need to identify each unique account-holder;
• ADIs will need to be able to produce a ‘Single Customer View’ (SCV) that aggregates the protected accounts held by each account-holder; and
• SCV data will be subject to annual reviews by an ADI’s external auditor, as well as attestation by the ADI’s chief executive officer.

APS 910 will take effect from 1 January 2012. Allowing for the two-year transition period, ADIs will need to comply with the standard not later than 31 December 2013 unless granted an extended transition.

An ADI must generate SCV data within 48 hours of the End-of-Day on which a declaration is made by APRA to invoke the FCS or APRA requests the ADI to generate the data.

The time period in which an ADI must be able to generate SCV data is extended from 48 hours to 72 hours after End-of-Day until 31 December 2015.