Please note that as of August 2012, The Bank Investor site is no longer being updated. Australia and New Zealand's best analysis of the banking and finance industry can be found at Banking Day.
Westpac is betting that investors in term deposits will become more sophisticated in their use of the product and start to look for some diversification in interest rate structures and terms.
About 12 months ago the bank started selling a range of products called Retirement Deposits. One of the
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Bank of Queensland suffered a 13 per cent fall in earnings for the year to August 2011, due to a big increase in its bad debt charge. The profit improved in the second half, however.
Net profit fell from $181.9 million to $158.7 million. Earnings per share fell from 77 cents to 63.1 cents and the
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Sell-side analysts are expecting the three major banks that are due to report their 2010/11 financial results over the coming month to produce growth in earnings per share of between nine and 18 per cent. But the outlook for the 2011/12 financial year is for a significant reduction in growth in
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Banks need to lift their game in terms of harnessing technology to deliver more for less, according to the ANZ's chief information officer, Anne Weatherston.
The ANZ's CIO said banks could learn a lesson from car-makers, which have been forced to automate in order to compete for the last 15
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During the October tax forum, Treasurer Wayne Swan threw some official government support behind a proposal to tilt the Australian corporate tax system away from businesses that earn above-average profits. For bank investors, it's a policy proposal to keep a very careful eye on.
The proposal
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Several sell-side analysts have issued notes in early October reminding clients that the current balance sheet strength and funding composition of the Australian banks is much stronger than it was leading up to the financial crisis in 2007.
These reminders are in response to the sustained
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Revenue from emerging markets, including China, will account for 47 per cent of all banking industry revenue in 2020, projections by McKinsey & Company say. At present, these markets account for 33 per cent of revenue.
Of this, 16 percentage points of industry revenue in 2020 will be generated by
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Bank investors may need to further cut their expectations about the profits major banks will produce in the coming years, the Reserve Bank of Australia warned on Friday.
In its twice-yearly Financial Stability Review, the RBA says Australian banks and other authorised deposit-taking institutions
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Retail investors get very few opportunities to invest in bonds. Bond investment is largely restricted to institutional investors in Australia, who can choose among more than 1,100 individual issues currently outstanding.
Retail investors, on the other hand, are relegated to selecting from the 70,
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National Australia Bank continues to grow at well above system in the home loan market. Australian Prudential Regulation Authority data shows that NAB increased its home loan book by 0.8 per cent in July – twice the rate of growth of housing credit overall.
NAB has maintained this rate of growth,
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Yellow Brick Road is making modest progress in generating more revenue from mortgage broking and related financial services’ business.
The 2011 financial statements show that YBR earned A$3.8 million in revenue from mortgage broking over the year, or about a third of the $11 million turnover of
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Commonwealth Bank will be hoping to grab a bigger share of the self-managed superannuation market with its acquisition of Count Financial.
Count announced yesterday that it had received an offer of A$1.40 a share from Commonwealth, pricing the company on a multiple of 14.6 times its 2010/11
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