Our financial and prudential reviews include prudential reviews (residential aged care and Support at Home providers) and targeted reviews. We use them to raise awareness of provider governance, and financial and prudential responsibilities. This process helps us find ways to educate and support providers.
Prudential reviews
We do prudential reviews with:
- residential aged care providers – these reviews help us understand providers’ financial and prudential management practices, liquidity management, investment management and refundable deposit practices
- Support at Home providers – these reviews replace our home care package pricing audits from November 2025. They help us understand providers’ financial and prudential management practices, compliance with financial reporting requirements, and price-charging practices including price setting, communication and transparency.
Who we do prudential reviews with
If you’re a residential aged care provider, we may select you for a prudential review if:
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you have 1–2 residential services and are located in a rural, regional or remote area or
- we think the review would benefit you.
We may select you for a review if you are a Support at Home provider in registration category 4 or 5 and:
- you have a history of late financial report submissions or
- we think the review would benefit you.
Information we ask for during prudential reviews
If you’re a residential aged care provider, we can ask for information about your:
- management of refundable deposits
- policies and procedures to support your financial and prudential management, liquidity management and investment management systems
- clear position descriptions and processes for delegating responsibilities
- financial reports and statements
- investment statements
- room types, prices and RAD approvals
- information for residents
- contracts and agreements.
If you’re a Support at Home provider, we can ask for information about your:
- service agreements (including any changes or variations), monthly statements and budgets for each of the people you provide care for
- pricing schedules and pricing information
- communication with people about pricing changes
- price setting practices
- aged care workers and associated providers
- invoices and payment records
- financial reporting processes
- policies and procedures
- documents describing financial governance responsibilities
- regular reports that show management and ongoing improvements
- clear position descriptions.
How prudential reviews work
If we select you for a prudential review, we’ll contact you to explain the process. We’ll ask for written documents and records to help us analyse your financial and prudential practices.
There are 4 steps in a prudential review:
- You submit to us the documents and records we have asked for
- You meet with us to tell us how you manage your financial processes
- We analyse your documents and records to decide if you meet your financial and prudential responsibilities
- We give you feedback on our assessment of compliance. We also discuss ways you can improve your financial and prudential management practices.
Prudential non-compliance
If we find that in some ways you don’t comply, we’ll support you to comply. We focus on education and managing risk, to help you improve. Together, we agree on a timeframe for you to return to compliance.
We can take regulatory action if you:
- avoid your responsibilities on purpose
- don’t return to compliance within the agreed timeframe.
Past prudential reviews
Previous prudential reviews we’ve done based on past legislation:
Targeted reviews
We use targeted reviews to focus on a specific issue or on a particular group of providers. Reviews help us assess the sector’s understanding of a financial and prudential obligations. Where we find that a provider is not complying with their obligations, we work with them to address the issue.
When we finish a targeted review, we produce an insights report. This report shares our findings, including common mistakes providers make and things they need to think about.
We do targeted reviews by taking the same 4 steps as for our prudential reviews.
Our current and upcoming targeted reviews focus on the new Financial and Prudential Standards:
- Financial and Prudential Management Standard
- Investment Standard
- Liquidity Standard.
Previous targeted reviews based on past legislation have been about:
- Capital expenditure
- Disclosure Standard
- Governance responsibilities
- Home care governance: Insights report
- Late lodgement of Annual Prudential Compliance Statement (APCS)
- Liquidity Standard
- Loans and debt repayment
- Making deductions from refundable deposits
- Permitted uses of refundable deposits for reasonable business losses
- Refunding refundable deposit: February and March 2024
- Refunding refundable deposits: January to March 2025
- Related party arrangements
- Room price approval and publishing
More information
If you have any questions about these programs, you can email us at f&p.reviews&audits@agedcarequality.gov.au
