Australian Banking & Finance articles from February 2007

Australian Banking & Finance archives from February 2007

Banking sector growth to slow: while 2007 should be another good year for banks in Australia, their performance is unlikely to reach the lofty heights of last year. Risks are also tipped to increase significantly.
February 15, 2007... Intensifying competition, a slowing economy, high inflation figures, rising interest rates, slowing credit growth and an increase in corporate bad debts are all likely to combine to restrict banking sector growth prospects in 2007. ...

Award to recognise sustainable bank.
February 15, 2007... IN 2007, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN the history of the Australian Banking & Finance magazine Awards, recognition will be given to the Sustainable Bank of the Year. In an era in which the global warming and Australia's water crisis are at the...

Turf war in mortgage fund industry: Aviva Research has released a review of mortgage funds offered via its Navigator investment platform, with the analysis shedding light on an industry in the midst of a shake-up.(NEWS)
February 15, 2007... The manager of Aviva Research, Stuart Fechner, said the review comes during an intriguing development phase for the mortgage industry, with a flood of newer entrants adding spice to the sector. "This, combined with recent industry efforts...

Property website offers finance company listings.(NEWS)
February 15, 2007... A RECENTLY LAUNCHED property industry website, forsite.com.au, provides finance providers with an opportunity to directly access new business from property developers. The site, which is essentially a reference source for the property...

Australia's finance sector now employs 400,000; Australia now has 400,000 employed people in its large and expanding finance sector.(NEWS)(Statistical data)
February 15, 2007... There are significantly more employed in Sydney and Melbourne combined than in either Hong Kong or Singapore. This is one of the great strengths of Australia as a financial centre in the region. Australia's financial services workforce is...

Enhanced property data a boon to finance industry: Australian Banking & Finance magazine interviewed RP Data chief executive, GRAHAM MIRABITO, about his company's innovative use of property data to produce information services tailored to the needs of the financial services sector.(SPECIAL PROMOTION)
February 15, 2007... Since it was established in 1991, RP Data has been known as a real estate information services company. You now appear to be at the forefront of providing property-related information to a range of financial services organisations and...

Financial institutions seek AML compliance solutions; Australian banks are now officially obliged to play a front line role in the government's struggle against money laundering. So does compliance simply represent a cost burden or, possibly, a business opportunity?(ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING)
February 15, 2007... It has been more than two months since the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Bill was passed as the key initiative in the government's efforts to stem the estimated $3 billion laundered from Australia by criminals each year....

Mobile payments set to come of age: the potential of mobile payments technology and processes--whereby consumers can purchase products or services via their mobile phone or PDA--may at last be about to be unlocked.(SPECIAL FEATURE: MOBILE PAYMENTS)
February 15, 2007... Two recently announced projects--one by Visa International and another by HSBC in conjunction with MasterCard and VIVOtech--suggest that global financial services players are at last taking the concept of mobile financial services seriously....

Australian interchange review--three years on: in 2002, the Reserve Bank of Australia announced it would reduce credit card interchange. The end result has been far from the predicted destruction of the Australian card market.(OPINION)
February 15, 2007... THE RULING ON CREDIT CARDS by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) was the first step in 'refining' the Australian payments system. The RBA is the first central bank to make a definitive decision on the contentious issue of association...