Australia & NZ

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.

Caps on investor and interest-only lending have served their purpose of moderating higher risk lending and improving lending standards, according to APRA chairman Wayne Byres.

Australian banks are reportedly lobbying for APRA to loosen its tough stance on the capital requirements it proposed last month, as funding costs rise more than expected.