Australian Banking & Finance articles from August 2005

Australian Banking & Finance archives from August 2005

Justice Neville Owen talks governance to the industry: HIH royal commissioner outlines shared responsibilities.(EXCLUSIVE)(Transcript)
August 15, 2005... The Hon Justice Neville Owen, Judge of the Court Of Appeal, Supreme Court of Western Australia, Court of Appeal Division was guest of honour and keynote speaker at the recent Australian Banking And Finance Insurance Awards 2005. Following is...

National to reimburse customers for over-charging.(National Australia Bank Ltd.)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... THE MANAGING DIRECTOR OF the National Australia Bank, John Stewart (right), recently announced the full impact of remedial measures for reimbursing customers for overcharging of fees on a range of financial packages, as well as updating initial...

SME customer advocacy findings a worry for banks: more than 65 percent of SMEs have never felt sufficiently impressed by their service provider to recommend them to a business associate or colleague.(Banking Industry)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... Even more worrying for banks, a massive 73 percent described the relationship they enjoy with their bank as "antagonistic". East & Partners added some questions on customer advocacy to recent Corporate, Commercial and SME research programs...

Melbourne to host major Asian Banking Conference.(Asian Bankers Association)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... The Minister for Financial Services, Andre Haermeyer, today welcomed news that ANZ had been successful in its bid to host the 2005 Asian Bankers Association (ABA) annual conference in Melbourne. Haermeyer said it was a tremendous boost to...

Australia's trade finance markets: trade offers the next newest yet oldest market opportunity: trade finance is back on the agenda for most commercial banks after several years of moribund attention and stop-start market entry by international banks into the Australian domestic scene.(NEWS)
August 15, 2005... Estimating the current value of these markets is challenging as few customers have an accurate understanding of what their trade finance services cost them and indeed how much they are spending. Nonetheless, it is sizeable. East & Partners'...

Suncorp achieves Australian first for investment risk management: Suncorp Investment Management goes live with Australia's first Value at Risk (VAR) solution from DSTi.(NEWS)
August 15, 2005... SUNCORP INVESTMENT management has raised the bar in the measurement and reporting of investment market risk after becoming the first Australian fund manager to go live with a DST International (DSTi) risk management solution, HiRisk, that...

Outsourcing--a strategic business option.
August 15, 2005... Outsourcing should not only be used to reduce costs and shift items around on the balance sheet--it can assist with the evolution of a business and act as an invaluable change agent. Mike Ettling, managing director at Unisys for Australia and...

Unmanaged environments will force costs upward: the humble office printer is costing Australasian financial companies billions of dollars every year, according to one of the world's largest printing companies, Lexmark.
August 15, 2005... Lexmark estimates unmanaged output environments are forcing costs ever upward, with paper use in banks and other financial organisations increasing by 6 to 8 percent per year. Many organisations are now turning to outsourcing to help bring...

Premiere Global Services solve client communications.(Premiere Global Services)(reinventing outsourcing)
August 15, 2005... JPMORGAN TREASURY SERVICES is a provider of innovative payments, collections, liquidity and investment management, trade finance, commercial card and information solutions to more than 50,000 clients worldwide. As part of its wide-ranging...

IBM has two key outsourcing offerings.(SPECIAL FEATURE--REINVENTING OUTSOURCING)
August 15, 2005... IBM STRATEGIC OUTSOURCING Services is the management of a company's applications and information technology (IT) systems. Customers strategically partner with IBM to manage and operate their applications and IT systems, generally under a...

Outsourcing--the growth enabler.
August 15, 2005... "Mid market companies determined to stay focused on growth, and not be distracted with onerous compliance requirements, skill shortages and risk management, will increasingly turn to external providers to supply a broad range of funcstions and...

Murray enlightens audience on customers' perceptions: the chief executive of the Commonwealth Bank, David Murray, was guest speaker at the third lecture for Australian Banking & Finance magazine, which attracted a large audience and was held in Sydney on July 27.
August 15, 2005... Tom Palmer of MBF with David Palmer Westpac. David Murray. Paul Snell of Jacty Consulting with Michael Tanner of Westpac. Nitin Patel of EQ Capital with Leo Macklin of Cisco. Andrew Crawford of Suncorp with Nur Oyman of CBA,...

Sour grapes?(David Murray resigns from Commonwealth Bank of Australia)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... Nice to see David Murray leaving on a high note after posting a whopping profit for CBA, but one or two of the analysts Screens is in touch with were slightly ungenerous in describing CBAs" $3.54 bin as "not meeting expectations".

Citigroup's new hirings.(David Hatt and Chris Knoblache appointments at Citigroup Australia)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... Citigroup Australia has finally managed to find not one senior executive who actually wants to work for the Umbrella Bank, but two. Readers will remember that the revolving door has been spinning fast of late throughout the group's extensive...

ABN's staffing woes.(ABN Amro Bank)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... And talking of hirings, a source at ABN Amro said that the recent corporate raid by Babcock & Brown was "a very poor affair indeed". With nine executives leaving en masse for reasons not clearly explained. the rest of the team are having to...

Why wine?(behind the screens)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... Got $250,000 in cash hanging around? If so, you can ca up Anne Ross and the private banking team at Adelaide Bank and enjoy, amongst other things the occasional bottle of South Australian wine. "The biggest thing for us is we use South...

Yes, Luke.(Luke Duffy receives the award for buck-passing award)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... Luke Duffy gets this month's award for buck-passing. Speaking in a Melbourne court, he said of the trading scandal at NAB: "It was coming from above--we didn't want to do it." he said. Of course you didn't Luke, Who could ever think that all...

Patricia Cross appointed to the NAB Board.(National Australia Bank Ltd.appoints Patricia Cross as its non executive director)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... THE CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL AUSTRALIA BANK GRAHAM KRAEHE today announced the appointment of Patricia Cross as a non-executive director, Cross will join the National's Board in early December 2005. She is also a director of Qantas and...

Which New Bank underpins strong Commonwealth result.(Commonwealth Bank of Australia)(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... COMMONWEALTH BANK HAS pointed to the progress made by its customer focussed re-engineering program, Which new Bank, as a primary driver of its strong full year result. Announcing an annual net profit of $3.99 billion, the bank said Which...

Bridging the deposit gap: financial institutions could do more to alert potential homebuyers to the options of buying a home sooner. Research by Genworth Financial shows that consumers believe lenders push for a 20 per cent deposit without highlighting the options of securing a home loan sooner.(Brief Article)
August 15, 2005... Steady interest rates, levelling house prices and strong wages growth signal a gradual improvement in housing affordability. But after years of escalating house prices, finding the deposit is still a major hurdle for first time buyers. ...

Online banking grows despite security concerns.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... THE NUMBER OF AUSTRALIANS using Internet banking increased 26 percent to 5.5 million in the 12 months to May 2005, more than double the growth of total Internet usage in the same period, according to research released recently by marketing...

DBS Bank and First Data sign agreement.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... FIRST DATA CORP, GAINED A significant foothold in the South Asia market following the signing of a multi-year agreement to manage credit card and merchant processing services, using First Data's VisionPLUS platform, for DBS Bank's portfolio of...

Sydney futures exchange continues strong growth.(NEWS)(futures markets)(Brief Article)
August 30, 2005... THE SYDNEY FUTURES Exchange experienced 15.6 percent growth in interest-rate futures volumes in July from the same month last year, with 3.92 million trades spread mainly between the three year bond, 90 day bank bill and 10-year bond contracts...

Australia performs strongly in Asian market private equity investment.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... AUSTRALIAN COMPANIES GARNERED THE LARGEST SHARE OF PRIVATE equity investments in the Asia-Pacific region (ex Japan), ahead of China and India, during the first two quarters of this year, according to the latest Thomson Financial private equity...

Fidelity to open Asia Pacific regional centre in Sydney.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... INTERNATIONAL FUNDS MANAGEMENT company, Fidelity Investments, announced last week it will establish its Asia Pacific Regional Services Centre in Sydney, Australia. The NSW Minister fur State Development, John Watkins, said establishment of...

Future bright for investment management industry.(NEWS)(Brief Article)
August 30, 2005... THE OUTLOOK FOR THE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT industry in Australia is positive with assets under management increasing by 15 to 18 percent in the current year. and remains optimistic with an expected growth of over 20 percent within the next three...

Low-doc loans in broker channel reach $2.2 billion in one quarter: the true size of the Low-documentation (Low-doc) market was finally revealed recently when the latest Market Intelligence Strategy Centre (MISC) National Mortgage Broker Pool results were released.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... Results for the March quarter isolated some $2 billion of Low-doc lending in three months i.e. $750 million per month. The actual figures, sourced from the MISC Broker and Lender Pool, stunned the more optimistic of Low-doc promoters, as many...

Opportunity abounds for banks able to connect with small business.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... EAST & PARTNERS' SECOND SIX monthly analysis of Australia's increasingly important Micro Business (A$1 to 5 million annual turnover) segment reveals a predominantly vanilla banking environment where service factors and relationship issues are...

Why replace your legacy system: the thought of replacing a company's core business system is enough to strike fear into the heart of many a CEO. We all know examples of where a $2 million IT project has turned into $20 million or an eight-month project has, in the blink of an eye, become 8 years.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... AS A RESULT, A DECADE OF band-aid solutions has left many insurers with legacy systems which are little more than just that--legacies. The business case for replacing these systems is stacking up as is the pressure to convert limited IT budgets...

Who scores a spot on Asia's ten of the best?(INTERNATIONAL)
August 30, 2005... WITH A MARKET CAP OF OVER $56 billion, the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, created by the merger of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Trust & Banking and Nippon Trust Bank, leads the region as the largest Asian-originating bank, according...

Temasek steps in as Citigroup steps aside: no sooner had Citigroup withdrawn from the running to list China's third largest bank--the Construction Bank of China--than Singapore's state-owned investment company Temasek stepped in to take a substantial stake in the banking giant.(INTERNATIONAL)
August 30, 2005... Is this just another investment for Temasek or part of something bigger, like the creation of a new megabank for Asia? Is Temasek's executive director, Ho Ching, the new power player in Asia's banking industry? Certainly Asia has never...

HSBC's first Chinese chairman talks strategy.(INTERNATIONAL)(Interview)
August 30, 2005... Vincent Cheng, Chairman of Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp, talked to Bloomberg's Bernard Lo about his leadership strategy upon assuming his new position, the lender's China strategy and the Hung Kong banking industry Cheng replaced David...

Working towards flawless execution.(SPECIAL FEATURE--CRM)(banking industry)
August 30, 2005... A team of researchers in the US (The Evergreen Project) put 160 big companies under the microscope to determine why some consistently outperform their competition and which strategies among the hundreds espoused by management gurus were the...

Driving business productivity with optimum decisions.(SPECIAL FEATURE--CRM)
August 30, 2005... There is little doubt that we are in the late stages of a cultural revolution in financial services. Sitting in a financial services planning meeting recently, our team happened upon the realisation that it's been a while since anyone talked to...

Top bankers share their views.(BEST BANKERS PANEL 2005--PICTORIALraul )
August 30, 2005... Allan Moss, Macquarie Bank, Gail Kelly of St George, Robert Edgar from ANZ and Stuart Davis of HSBC were guest panelists at the Best Bankers event held in Sydney on August 19. The 2005 Award winners shared their views on the outlook for the...

Healthy for whom?(BEHIND the SCREENS)(bank fees)(Brief Article)
August 30, 2005... It's that time of year again, we see, when everyone falls over themselves to complain about bank charges. Indeed, you can hardly open a paper without reading some hysterical comment or other. Discussing this over a few sundowners, a very senior...

Overheard.(BEHIND the SCREENS)
August 30, 2005... Overheard in Adelaide banking circles: "If my career takes me to Sydney or Melbourne, I probably won't want to come back". To which the reply was, "if your career takes you to Sydney or Melbourne, what makes you so sure you'll be welcome back?"...

Parking problems.(BEHIND the SCREENS)
August 30, 2005... If you'd worked hard for the same bank for many years and then treated yourself to a luxury car as reward for your efforts, it would be reasonable to expect that you'd take good care of it. Perhaps not in Brisbane. We won't name him, but who...

BankWest in safe hands.(BEHIND the SCREENS)(Paul Clark of BankWest Corp.)(Brief Article)
August 30, 2005... Good to hear that Paul Clark is making a name for himself over at BankWest. Having sat around for some while at Collins Street undertaking what is euphemistically known as "special projects" for NAB, Clark is now, we hear, considered something...

People in glass houses ...(BEHIND the SCREENS)(Brief Article)
August 30, 2005... And talking of Nobby Clark's former bank, a friend of ours reveals that plans by a colleague to "put the boot in" at the world's largest greenhouse in Victoria Harbour were, quite literally foiled. Throwing a tantrum over a minor matter, as is...

Low-doc to no-doc.(BEHIND the SCREENS)
August 30, 2005... Although the big four don't really like to talk about it openly, they've been making money for years on so called low-documentation loans which, for an advanced interest rate, offer money to those without an established credit history. Who,...

New initiatives in wealth management.(NEWS)
August 30, 2005... If you work in the wealth management area, what are your plans to step ahead of your rivals and cement a long term relationship with your clients? A number of institutions overseas are running financial "boot camps" for their children. One...