Comment (188 items)

Having reserved some time recently to catch up with one potentially fruitful data set, courtesy of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services and its inquiry into the "impairment of customer loans", we've gained some additional perspective on Labor's proposed royal commission. read more

The Australian banking industry's response to the challenge of its virulent reputation problems demands a little decoding. read more

The NSW Government is moving towards a trial of debit and credit cards to allow commuters to make contactless payments for travelling on public transport. read more

Labor's call for a banking royal commission may have well and truly hit the right chords. First, with the mass market of voters (one that overlaps, by and large, with the "mass affluent" segment hunted by most retail banks). read more

The extent of "mortgagee in possession" by lenders, once a sore spot for financiers and the media, may be pretty modest at present. read more

As the second five year term of current RBA governor Glenn Stevens winds up, it's more than likely that an outsider, rather than an obvious insider candidate, will be selected as the next governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. read more

Its popularity will be hard to argue with but the relevance and effectiveness of a royal commission into banking, as announced by Australia's Labor opposition, may be dubious. read more

A few observations, now that another "fintech" start-up is moving rapidly to grown-up. read more

Negative interest rates are becoming all the rage. It follows on from the post-GFC fad of quantitative easing and many countries now have them; and even some companies too. read more

Some banks have expressed a desire for Basel III capital requirements to be reduced, to the extent that implementation of IFRS 9 results in increased provisions for credit losses. read more

The Australian banking industry is seeding a future credit boom with an openness to latitude in lending standards. read more