Australia & NZ

The Australian Payments Council is inviting comments to review it 2015 Australian Payments Plan aimed at supporting digital payments.

ASIC was reportedly found to have accepted expensive gifts and hospitality from financial firms including Macquarie Bank even as it was under multiple investigations by the corporate regulator.

While ASIC officials talk up plans to fund more court cases, behind the scenes they are reportedly concerned about the community backlash and loss of confidence if cases are lost.

The RBNZ's endeavours to strengthen the banks could come at a significant cost to the New Zealand economy, UBS has said in a research note.

Superannuation members could benefit by an estimated A$3.8bn if two main structural problems were fixed, says the Productivity Commission in a new report.

Melody Gao at Sydney-based financial services consultancy firm Sophie Grace explains the implications of a bill to impose new design and distribution obligations on issuers and grant ASIC product intervention powers.

ASIC proposes new disclosure norms for superannuation and managed investment funds to boost transparency and comparability between funds.

By setting mortgage priority amounts almost three times the home loan principal, banks are preventing borrowers from shopping around for a second mortgage.

In the year ahead, banks will have to focus on seamless data integration and regtech adoption to cope with increasingly complex regulatory reporting requirements, says Wolters Kluwer’s Wouter Delbaere.

Following a review of allocations practices in equity raising transactions, ASIC said allocations to employees should be avoided as they can present conflicts of interest.