How the Banking Royal Commission will affect the auto-financing industry
The recent release of the banking royal commission’s interim report has highlighted that responsible lending practices need to be extended to the auto-finance industry. The implications of this for entities making car loans is significant as 90% of all car sales are currently arranged through finance, many of which have fallen short of responsible lending provisions. According to the report it is not enough just use ‘likelihood of default’ as a measure of loan suitability. Prior to making an assessment on whether a loan is suitable, the licensee must now take a number of steps to ensure responsible lending provisions are met. These necessary steps include: “making reasonable inquiries about […]
Big lending fall shows businesses need to investigate crowdfunding options
A significant drop in lending activity during December has illustrated the need for business owners to investigate other ways raise growth funds, including crowdfunding, according to a major Australian crowdfunding platform. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures which were released today, the value of lending commitments to businesses fell by 9.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms in the month of December 2018. This included commercial finance commitments dropping by 9.8 per cent and lease finance falling by 5.7 per cent. The fall in business lending outstripped the reduction in household lending commitments, which went down 4.4 per cent. In the year to December 2018, business lending commitments […]
UBank launches AI mortgage application assistant
A new artificial intelligence-powered mortgage application assistant will soon be able to answer customer questions in natural language, UBank has announced. UBank has revealed that its new AI-powered digital home loan application assistant, called Mia (short for My Interactive Agent), will start answering more than 300 common customer questions in real time from late February. The NAB subsidiary, which worked with FaceMe to develop Mia, said customers will be able to converse in natural language with the AI assistant via their desktop or mobile devices at any time about their mortgage applications. For example, customers could ask about what the variable rate of a loan is or what classifies as […]
Why business enterprise should start accepting cryptocurrency as payments
Payments for products and services is something that has been going on since the beginning of humankind. The main change has been how it has been established. From changing to cryptographic forms of money, strategies for payment have changed drastically all through human history, and we are in the middle another rush of change. Many will feel that digital forms of money are the catalyst for the new payment revolution, yet those indicators are presumably losing track of the main issue at hand. Even though crypto works for new and different payment strategies, it is early compared with the latest trend. Cryptographic forms of money are fast in rising as […]
IBM Blockchain Platform now live in Melbourne
IBM has made its blockchain platform available out of the IBM data centre in Melbourne, allowing customers to run their applications on the company’s cloud and abide by data sovereignty requirements. The platform will also be available via the data centre in Sydney by the end of March, with head of blockchain and consulting practice leader for IBM in Australia and New Zealand Rupert Colchester saying the reason for a second location is largely for availability and redundancy. “By its very nature, it’s a distributed ledger technology so often ledgers are running in different locations and the demand for two is through clients and customers in this geography wanting to […]
Is Ripple too far ahead of its time?
As Swift and Ripple vie for the future of cross-border payments, an article published in American Banker has shed some light onto the obstacles facing both brands. At the same time, Swift has taken a step towards blockchain by linking its payments standard – GPI, or Global Payments Innovation – to R3’s Corda blockchain. It’s likely to be a winner-takes-all market because getting everyone onto the same network is crucial for getting the most out of the technology. As such, now might be a pivotal time for Ripple. The uptake numbers are sitting in Swift GPI’s favour though. Swift says more than 450 banks, which handle over 80% of international […]
CBA plugs 500,000 customers into Apple Pay in just two weeks
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s backflip on its longstanding Apple Pay boycott has paid off in spades, with more than half a million people flocking to the new payment service just two weeks after it was made publicly available to customers. The stampede of iPhone users is so big it has boosted the CBA’s total number of mobile banking by half, propelling the number from 1 million Android users to a total of 1.5 million total mobile numbers. The fresh numbers were revealed to investment analysts this week by CBA chief executive Matt Comyn, who credited the bank’s customer engagement platform for the delivering the result, before outlining how robust […]
Neo-lender Wisr sees increase in banking defectors amid Banking Royal Commission
Neo-lender Wisr (ASX:WZR) has launched a bold new campaign targeting disillusioned customers of big banks, following the Hayne Royal Commission handing down its findings into consumer lending practices. The ‘Australia’s Getting Wisr’ campaign taps into the prevailing sense of unfairness that Australians feel towards the big banks and how customers can make smarter choices when seeking personal loans. The campaign in the coming months will showcase the company’s personal loan, financial wellness programs and new smartphone application. It is the first brand campaign undertaken by Wisr since launching the brand in March 2018 and will appear nationally on television and online from this week. Earlier this week the Hayne Royal […]
