Australian Banking & Finance articles from June 2006

Australian Banking & Finance archives from June 2006

Mortgage industry "cautious" after May rates hike: Australia's mortgage industry is cautiously optimistic that the Reserve Bank's decision to raise interest rates for the first time in 14 months will have little impact on confidence in the housing sector.
June 15, 2006... By our Staff Reporter But they warn a repeat of the RBA's May verdict before the end of the year could cause unnecessary pain for households and businesses. The RBA's decision to increase official rates by a quarter of a percent to...

Executive interview: Gerd Schenkel, GM, Customer Strategy & Cross Marketing, NAB.(NEWS)(Interview)
June 15, 2006... Gerd Schenkel joined National Australia Bank as general manager, Customer Strategy & Cross Marketing in 2005 from Citigroup where he was director of Strategy & Business Development for Australia. Before this Schenkel was head of Strategy,...

CommSec provides opportunity to tap into strong Asian sharemarkets: Asian economies have been key beneficiaries from global economic expansion resulting in a sharemarket boost across the region. In recognition of this, Commonwealth Bank has launched the latest of its series of Capital investment products, Capital Asia.(NEWS)
June 15, 2006... CommSec's Chief Equities Economist, Craig James, said the global economy has continued to power ahead in 2006, thanks largely to unprecedented growth in mainland China. "The economies which stand to benefit most from the global expansion...

St George hitting the road in Europe.(NEWS)
June 15, 2006... St George Bank is embarking on a series of roadshow across Europe later this month, meeting investors and updating them on the banks credit situation. The roadshows will take place from 15 to 22 May and are being arranged by JPMorgan and...

NAB uses budget reforms to grow asset finance.(NEWS)
June 15, 2006... NATIONAL AUSTRALIA BANK SAID it will pass on the governments accelerated depreciation reforms to its customers an initiative intended to stimulate demand in the strongly growing asset finance market. The reforms were announced in the recent...

Money without borders: managing partner of Unisys Financial Service Practice, Rob Dewar, outlines how an increasingly interconnected world and rising personal wealth is leading to people using technology to invest across the globe.(NEWS)
June 15, 2006... According to the historian Paul Kennedy, author of 'Preparing for the Twenty-First Century', the amount of money traded and exchanged in international currency markets now far exceeds the trade in manufactured goods between nations. The...

Credit where credit's due: rethinking the retail lending process: in an earlier edition of Australian Banking & Finance we ran the following story, which contained some errors. Here is the corrected version.(NEWS)
June 15, 2006... For many bankers, the credit decision remains the defining act of their profession. The typical European bank still runs around half of all mortgage applications through a manual underwriting process. This is needlessly expensive, because...

Melbourne outpaces Sydney in financial services growth: the re-emergence of our southernmost mainland city as a major financial centre is gathering pace.
June 15, 2006... Many Australians may smirk when they see a Victorian number plate that argues its state is 'the place to be'. But the assertion is justified when it comes to the financial services sector. For over 100 years until the 1970s, Melbourne was a...

Australia vulnerable to fraud: credit card security is seriously outdated, and is leaving Australia vulnerable to fraud.(SPECIAL FEATURE INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER CREDIT CARD SUMMIT 2006)
June 15, 2006... That's the view of the Head of the Australian Federal Police, supported by key industry leaders at Australian Banking and Finance Magazine's "International Consumer Credit Card Summit 2006" in Sydney. Commissioner Mick Keelty warned that...

MasterCard's new payment technology on trial: as an alternative to low-value cash payments, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) will be the first bank in the country to trial MasterCard's PayPass contactless payment technology.(SPECIAL FEATURE INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER CREDIT CARD SUMMIT 2006)
June 15, 2006... In the six-month long trial, new cards featuring MasterCard's RFID PayPass technology will be issued to around 35,000 customers in New South Wales (NSW). "This new payment option will be great for small businesses, as well as customers....

The International Consumer Credit Card Summit 2006.(INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER CREDIT CARD SUMMIT 2006--PICTORIAL)
June 15, 2006... Now in its 3rd year the summit was well attended with over 170 people from the industry. Highlights included presentations from Commissioner Mick Keelty, the CBA new retail head, Michael Cameron and the CEO of Football Federation Australia,...

Virgin Money names new CEO.(Virgin Money Personal Financial Service Ltd. appoints David Wakeley)(Brief article)
June 15, 2006... VIRGIN MONEY HAS APPOINTED David Wakeley as Chief Executive Officer. The head role had been vacant since Rohan Gamble left in March this year. The decision was said to be mutual but it was inferred that Gamble, who had been CEO since...

The risks of people.(types of fraud in banking industry and ways to overcome them)
June 15, 2006... When asked to name the most threatening type of risk to an organisation, risk and compliance managers nearly always answer "people". This reference includes not only staff committing deliberate fraud, but also those making unintended...