Australia's increasingly entrenched inflation problem has a number of dimensions - one of them the soaring cost of financial services.Quarterly estimates on the consumer price index published yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics incorporate the partial result of efforts to improve the method of estimating the costs of financial services.Over the twelve months to June 2008, the price of financial and insurance services rose 9.9 per cent, with increases in the prices of all components. The price of deposit and loan facilities increased 16.2 per cent, while insurance services increased 7.0 per cent and other financial services increased 3.1 per cent.There's a degree of catch up or correction on past estimates in these rates of increase, but the level of inflation in financial services is more than twice that of the wider consumer price index.For the June 2008 quarter alone deposit and loan facilities increased 9.5 per cent, insurance services increased 2.5 per cent, while the cost of other financial services fell 2.9 per cent.