Outsiders studying banks and bank capital often find their analysis limited by the bank regulator's secrecy over the actual capital ratio that it dictates to each entity.This cloak of confidentiality will remain under the Basel III regime, APRA official Wayne Byres told the Finsia workshop yesterday.Byres, APRA's executive general manager responsible for diversified institutions, said that APRA's "adjustments" to notional, minimum capital ratios for banks "will remain the subject of discussion between APRA and the ADI concerned only". "Confidentiality is critical to avoiding the adverse signalling effects which would otherwise limit the effectiveness of the regime," he said.While many banks do talk about the target capital ratios established by their board, and may also talk about estimates of the level of surplus capital above these internal targets, all the large banks and almost all other ADIs are careful to observe this APRA policy.APRA's version of the Basel III regime will, from 2013, introduce a series of capital ratios: core equity capital; an updated tier-one capital ratio; the "capital conservation buffer"; the "countercyclical buffer", and then the further secret adjustment referred to above.Byres said the capital conservation buffer will be "a permanent feature of the regime, applied to all and mostly applied at a constant size to all."He said of the countercyclical buffer (intended to rise at times of high credit growth): "While applied to all, it will vary in size over time. It will be announced by APRA when [it is] switched on and off."The hidden final adjustment may be smaller than that imposed by APRA at present.He said these "add-ons will need to be recalibrated. Typically, they will be lower in size and my guess is that they will be applied less frequently than they have in the past."