APRA now empowered to remove super directors | Australian Markets

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) now has the ability to disqualify superannuation fund administrators and executives.

The regulator has confronted Parliamentary committee questioning over its skill to behave in opposition to superannuation fund trustees and executives and has acknowledge that, within the final 5 years, it has by no means eliminated a director from a superannuation fund.

It mentioned that its skill to take away administrators from a superannuation trustee board had been restricted however that state of affairs had modified efficient from Friday, final week.

Beneath questioning during Senate Estimates from NSW Liberal Senator, Andrew Bragg, about how many administrators had been eliminated previously 5 years, APRA responded none, earlier than including: “however, APRA has commenced proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia seeking civil penalties and the disqualification of First Super Pty Ltd director and co-chair Michael O’Connor”.

It then mentioned it needed to be famous “that APRA’s powers to take away a director from a trustee board are restricted to:

• Making an software to the Federal Courtroom to hunt orders for a disqualification of a director. This requires APRA to show that an particular person contravened a provision of an Act administered by APRA and that the contravention is sufficiently severe to warrant disqualification; and
• directing a trustee to take away an particular person from the board, which requires us to determine (relevantly) that the trustee has contravened the law or that the direction is critical within the pursuits of beneficiaries of the fund.

The regulator then mentioned that from 15 March 2025, “APRA will have the power to disqualify individuals from acting as accountable persons for superannuation trustees if it is satisfied that the individual breached their accountability obligations under the Financial Accountability Regime and the disqualification is justified having regard to the seriousness of the failure to comply”.

Bragg had framed his Senate Estimates questions across the standing of Cbus chair, Wayne Swan, given that he’s additionally national president of the Australian Labor Occasion (ALP).

The Senator requested whether or not APRA had thought-about whether or not or not this gave rise to “a conflict of interest under the responsible person and fit and proper person test”.