(Reuters) - Australia's prudential watchdog on Thursday proposed broadening the extent of financial data on lenders that it makes publicly available, in a push to boost transparency in the banking sector.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which currently publishes less that 1% of data collected from banks due to legal restrictions, proposed releasing data of individual lenders from 2020. APRA currently only publishes industry level data.
The regulator also proposed publishing commentary from these lenders regarding significant changes in their data.
The move comes amid heavy scrutiny of the financial sector following accusations of millions of breaches of money laundering laws by the country's second-largest bank Westpac Banking Corp <WBC.AX>.
APRA said it has started a 12-week consultation period about the proposal that concludes on Feb. 28, 2020.
(Reporting by Shreya Mariam Job in Bengaluru; Editing by Sam Holmes)
