APRA Publishes 2026-27 Corporate Plan

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has published its 2026-27 Corporate Plan, built around three strategic priorities: maintaining financial system safety and stability, “getting the balance right” so as to meet those objectives without undue cost to industry, and improving APRA’s own organizational effectiveness.

APRA Chair John Lonsdale said the international and domestic economic environment “remains challenging,” while “technological developments are creating new threats and amplifying older ones.” The Plan focuses on strengthening industry resilience to geopolitical tensions, cyber-attacks and “frontier AI,” as well as to risks arising from growing interconnections across the financial sector and increased reliance on service providers. APRA emphasizes that risk management practices must keep pace as cyber, AI, geopolitical, and other risks become more complex and interconnected.

APRA’s supervisory priorities for 2026-27 include strengthening resilience to AI-enabled cyber threats, increasing focus on quantum computing risks, and assessing risks associated with common technology platforms and material service providers. APRA will also review banks’ lending practices, launch a new system-risk stress test, and require selected large superannuation trustees to appoint an independent party to review their valuation governance.

On policy, Lonsdale said this year’s agenda aims for “a net neutral impact on regulatory burden,” with new requirements “broadly offset by simplification elsewhere.” Priorities include superannuation reforms, new governance requirements, targeted changes to bank capital and liquidity standards, and changes to the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) in joint consultation with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

APRA is also attending to its own operations, including becoming an “AI-enabled regulator,” expanding supervisory analytics, strengthening data and cyber capabilities, and investing in leadership and workforce skills. “Internally, it is critical that we improve our own efficiency and effectiveness,” Lonsdale wrote in the Plan’s foreword. “As the operating environment becomes more challenging and dynamic, we too need to expand our skills, increase our speed and invest in new ways of working. To ensure APRA is ready to face future challenges, we have set ourselves an ambitious organisational change agenda. Our aim is to make APRA a more agile and dynamic organisation.”