ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott says technology will kill the banking oligopoly
Rapid technological disruption will break apart the Australian banking oligopoly and overturn the universal banking model that has underpinned big bank profits for decades, the chief executive of ANZ Banking Group told thousands of global bankers on Monday. In order to thrive in an uncertain future, banks will need to partner more with start-ups and global tech giants and potentially sell financial products manufactured by outsiders, Shayne Elliott said. The ANZ boss said dealing with the fallout of the Hayne royal commission simultaneously with unprecedented technological change was “challenging”, although he remained optimistic that ANZ could cope with both. The four-day Sibos event in Sydney this week is being attended […]
Westpac launches ‘designer’ wearable payments accessories
The bank has made payment-enabled keychains, silicon tags, and some pins available, but there’s still no sign of Apple Pay. Westpac has announced the availability of “Centsitive Objects” on Wednesday, touted by the bank as a range of “designer” wearable payment-enabled accessories. Instead of just plugging into devices manufactured by others, Westpac launched its own range of wearable, hands-free, and battery-free payment accessories in October. The new range designed by Sydney-based entrepreneur Hayden Cox builds on the bank’s PayWear wearable payments play. According to Cox, his designs are ideally shaped for customers that want a payments device with a “little more flavour”. “Our customers are increasingly on-the-go with more than […]
Neobank Revolut to launch in Australia, 20,000 on waiting list
“I never want Revolut to be referring to itself as a bank,” says its head of marketing, Chad West. “We are an alternative to a bank. We are completely different.” Revolut, headquartered in London, was only founded three years ago; it now has over 3 million customers in Europe, a number that has doubled over the past nine months. The neobank is attracting 7000 new customers each day, and expects this will be 10,000 by the end of this year. In April it secured $US250 million in fresh venture capital funding for global expansion, at a valuation of $US1.7 billion. It’s the fastest-growing unicorn tech company in Europe. And according […]
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 […]
