The banking sector and its advisors have had their first look at the proposed legislation, introduction into Federal Parliament yesterday (Thursday 19 October). There have been a number of differences spotted already. "At first blush there are a number of material differences between the BEAR Exposure Draft and yesterday's first reading version", according to KPMG's legal experts. Below is a summary of the majority of their initial reactions and comments:  A new section has been added to address inconsistencies with corresponding foreign laws. The meaning of "accountable persons" has been amended to reflect the distinction between an individual operating in an ADI, or in the case of a subsidiary of the ADI, their position in the subsidiary. In addition, the words "senior executive" have been inserted prior to each of the areas of responsibility which trigger the definition of an accountable person. The deferred remuneration obligations of an ADI include the requirement to have a policy in force where, if the person has failed to comply with his or her accountability obligations, the variable remuneration is reduced by an amount proportionate to the failure. The Bill removes the requirement that the reduction in variable remuneration occurs also where the person "is likely to have failed to comply with these obligations." The Bill also appears to remove a retention bonus explicitly from the meaning of variable remuneration. There has been extra attention paid to the minimum amount of an accountable person's variable remuneration that is required to be deferred. The new legislation empowers APRA to create legislative instruments to determine the way to work out the valuable of the variable remuneration for an accountable person of an ADI subsidiaries of ADIs. More generally, APRA has extended powers to make determinations through legislative instruments.Other amendments make technical changes the APRA Act 1998 and the Banking Act 1959.  These amendments appear to focus on amendments to the offences and definitions within these Acts.  The amendments also focus on the admissibility of evidence and materials and legal professional privilege.KPMG's final comment is: "Interesting to note the addition of a section which enables the Examiner (although potentially this term should be "Investigator", given previous subsections) to "make an audit, or audio-visual, recording of all or any part of the examination".  This is not something we have seen before."    The BEAR legislation has been referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for report by November 24. The AFR has reported that the Turnbull government on Thursday also introduced legislation to give effect to other banking measures it announced in the federal budget in May. These include giving APRA a "reserve power" over shadow banking, removing prohibitions on lenders with less than $50 million in capital using the word 'bank', strengthening APRA's crisis management powers, and requiring credit card