ASIC welcomes the release of the Council of Financial Regulators’ Final Report of the Review into Small and Medium-sized Banks (CFR Report), and the Government’s response to the recommendations in the report.
The CFR Report contains a package of proposed changes to reduce regulatory costs for small and medium-sized banks and improve competitiveness with larger banks.
The proposals include two specific actions for ASIC:
- reduce the frequency of internal dispute resolution (IDR) data reporting for small banks (from 6 months to 12 months), and
- adopt ongoing processes to review regulatory reporting requirements for small and medium-sized banks, to ensure fitness for purpose.
ASIC will action the reforms to reporting of IDR data as soon as possible, and will shortly contact small banks to implement the recommended reduction in reporting frequency. ASIC will take a no-action position for small banks until the technical and system changes are formalised in approximately 2027.
This will effectively bring forward ASIC’s implementation of the CFR commitment by more than twelve months, which means there will be an immediate reduction in reporting burden for small banks from the next IDR data submission window in January-February 2026.
In its response to the review, the Government has welcomed the actions from regulators in the CFR Report.
ASIC will work closely with the Government to support the implementation of the CFR’s recommendations.
Background
CFR Report
The CFR Report was prepared by the four CFR members agencies (ASIC, APRA, the RBA and Treasury), in consultation with the ACCC. The CFR Report contains nine actions for regulators and nine recommendations for Government/regulators. For more information, see:
- Report to Government by the Council of Financial Regulators, in consultation with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and
- Response to the Council of Financial Regulators Small and Medium Banks Review.
The release of the final CFR Report follows the publication of an issues paper by the CFR agencies, in consultation with the ACCC, in December 2024.
IDR data reporting
All Australian financial services (AFS) licensees who provide financial services to retail clients, and all Australian credit licensees, are required to record data on the customer complaints they receive and provide this data to ASIC in a standardised and de-identified format. For more information on IDR data reporting, see Internal dispute resolution data reporting.
