Open banking: Refinance in 15 minutes
Open banking could see borrowers refinancing their home loans in 15 minutes, according to one panellist at a recent fintech summit. The event, held in Sydney on Tuesday (16 October), focused on how digital innovation was changing finance. The program included speakers and panel discussions on topics such as challenger brands, neo-banking and open banking. One panel session on challenger brands and neo-banks discussed the future of open banking. Panellists included CEO of VOLT bank, Steve Weston, and chief marketing officer of Athena Home Loans, Natalie Dinsdale. Athena Home Loans is still in a soft pilot phase, but Dinsdale said its “mission is to own home loans”. Other panellists were […]
ANZ in global banking consortium to digitise trade finance
ANZ Banking Group has joined forces with six global banking giants to create the “Trade Information Network”, which the lenders say will accelerate the digitisation of traditionally paper-based processes to unlock billions of dollars of funding for global exporters. “The network has the potential to transform international trade,” the banks said in a media release issued on Thursday, ahead of its official unveiling at the massive Sibos conference in Sydney on Monday. The other members of the new network are: Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered. The banks want to develop a new industry standard for trade finance, which has been in a challenging period […]
The peril and promise of open banking
By Trade Ledger’s Martin McCann It seems an age since then-Treasurer Scott Morrison called on the open banking sector to not “stuff it up” at the annual FinTech Awards shortly before he became Prime Minister. Now the music has stopped and we have a PM who has proven he is not a luddite. But what concerns me, and I suspect the sector as a whole, is that the federal government could be in the process of doing just that – stuffing it up – by not following world’s best practice in the implementation of open banking. Open banking has the potential to revolutionise the Australian financial landscape – which is […]
Open banking could make expense checks easier for brokers
Brokers will be one of the many beneficiaries of the comprehensive credit reporting and open banking regimes, according to mortgage industry executives. Stephen Moore, CEO of Choice, believes brokers will significantly benefit from the mandatory comprehensive credit reporting (CCR) regime — which is yet to be legislated despite the government imposing a deadline on the major banks to submit 50 per cent of their CCR data by 30 September 2018 — and open banking more broadly. “We have a fundamental belief that the future of broking for many brokers is a combination of digital interaction with customers married with high-quality face-to-face advice,” Mr Moore told The Adviser. “The reason we say that is because […]
Programmable money will be the trigger for governments to adopt blockchain
The original blockchain use case – bitcoin – involved making payments while circumventing government and banks. So there’s some irony that its latest local use case involves a big government agency and the country’s largest financial institution adapting the original blockchain to control how government payments are spent. But blockchain innovation is full of surprises. Like the internet itself, what was briefly a rebellious technology is fast becoming mainstream. The Australian Financial Review revealed today that Commonwealth Bank and the CSIRO’s Data61 unit have teamed up on a pilot that could see targeted payments made by the National Disability and Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The blockchain will be a private version […]
Australia’s first next-gen digital bank is live
South-Melbourne based technology developer, Ferocia – presented the wide range of benefits this next-gen digital bank will offer customers.
CBA and Data61 join forces to create ‘smart money’
The Commonwealth Bank and CSIRO’s Data61 have joined forces to create “smart money” using blockchain technology, which has the potential to reduce fraud and revolutionise government programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme. In an initial proof-of-concept called Making Money Smart, the organisations have created programmable money by using smart contracts on a private blockchain, allowing conditions to be applied to the way the money is spent. CBA’s head of experimentation and blockchain, Sophie Gilder, told The Australian Financial Review the NDIS was a logical scheme to apply smart money to because of the number of rules, the scale and the lack of transparency and manual reconciliation that takes […]
Westpac customers can now deposit cheques via mobile
Westpac launches Australian-first feature allowing customers to scan and deposit cheques via the Westpac Live app. In an Australian first Westpac has launched Westpac Mobile Cheque Deposit, a feature enabling customers to scan and submit cheques via mobile banking. Customers can take a photo of their physical cheque and deposit it with the bank through the Westpac Live mobile banking app, without the need to visit a branch or ATM. If you, like me, haven’t used a cheque for the better part of a decade this new feature might seem a bit odd. However, Westpac still receives more than 30,000 physical cheques from customers each and every day highlighting the […]
