On 16 July 2026, Treasurer Jim Chalmers released a new Statement of Expectations for APRA — and for the first time, the statement puts growth on equal footing with stability and protection.
Regulated entities are being told, in effect, that “we followed the rules” will sit alongside “we supported growth” as a measure of good regulatory citizenship.
The 30-second take
APRA’s new Statement of Intent responds to a Government Statement of Expectations that directs the regulator to “support growth and productivity through proportionate, risk-based regulation while continuing to promote financial stability, consumer protection and market integrity.”
ASIC received a parallel directive.
Neither statement removes the underlying mandate — stability and conduct obligations are unchanged — but it does change what “good” looks like in supervisory conversations.
The UK ran this experiment first, giving its regulators a near-identical growth objective in 2023. Two years on, a House of Lords committee found it had barely shifted anything, because nobody had addressed the underlying culture the objective was meant to counter. That’s the risk for Australian boards: assuming the tone has changed before the practice has.
What’s actually different, and what isn’t
APRA and ASIC, July 2026 — the new mandate. The updated Statements of Expectations direct both regulators to weigh growth and productivity alongside their existing objectives. Chalmers has framed it as part of tackling Australia’s “longstanding productivity challenge.”
For regulated entities, the practical question isn’t whether this changes the rules — it doesn’t, directly — but whether it changes how supervisors exercise judgement on proportionality, timelines, and enforcement priorities.
The UK’s FCA and PRA, 2023–2025 — the cautionary precedent. The UK gave its financial regulators a near-identical secondary growth and competitiveness objective under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023. By June 2025, a House of Lords Financial Services Regulation Committee inquiry concluded the objective was “pointless unless their culture of risk aversion is addressed” — finding that a deeply entrenched compliance culture had absorbed the new objective without materially changing outcomes for firms.
The lesson for Australian boards isn’t that growth mandates don’t matter; it’s that a statement of intent from the top doesn’t automatically change supervisory behaviour on the ground.
Questions risk and governance teams should be asking now
- Where does this statement sit in our regulatory horizon-scanning, and who owns tracking whether APRA’s actual supervisory practice shifts in response?
- If APRA becomes more permissive on timelines or proportionality, do we have the governance discipline to not let that slide into complacency?
- Are we able to distinguish, in real time, between a genuine change in supervisory expectations and a statement that hasn’t yet translated into practice — the way the UK experience suggests it might not?
- Which current initiatives could we credibly frame as supporting growth and productivity, and does our board reporting currently capture that?
- Have we mapped how a “growth-and-stability” balancing act plays out across governance, conduct, privacy and operational resilience, rather than treating it as a single-issue change?
Where to start
Statements of Expectations set tone before they set practice — and the UK’s experience shows that gap can last years, not months.
The boards that get ahead of this aren’t the ones reacting to the announcement; they’re the ones actually watching whether APRA’s supervisory behaviour changes, and treating a shift in emphasis as a signal to test, not a reason to relax.
If you want a structured way to track how these obligations are actually landing, that’s exactly what the Innovation of Risk is built to help with.
Innovation of Risk provides risk, governance and AI maturity and risk assessment tools to help organisations have better internal risk, governance and assurance discussions.