Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
"Intelligent Insight"
From The Conversation. This week, ANZ, the latest (and now the last) of the big four Australian banks to have ventured far away from the nest, confirmed it was coming home into the arms of the Bank of Mum and Dad (also known as the Australian taxpayer). Though it took considerably less time than NAB’s … Continue reading “Time to toss one of banking’s four pillars out of the nest?”
Secretary to the Treasury, John Fraser gave an address to the Australian Government Fixed Income Forum in Tokyo. He argues that the Australian economy continues to perform well and largely as expected in the 2016-17 Budget. It remains resilient in the face of global volatility. The economy is transitioning from an unprecedented mining investment boom … Continue reading “The Resilience Of The Australian Economy”
We highlighted recently that more first time buyers are getting help from “The Bank of Mum and Dad” to buy a property and the inter-generational issues this implies. So we were interested to read this article from The Conversation, which uses a small sample of young people, but not focussing on those seeking to buy … Continue reading “Young people don’t expect to rely on the ‘bank of mum and dad’: study”
From The Conversation. Companies offering life insurance will now disclose the outcomes of claims, under a new reporting regime in a bid to increase transparency in the industry. This information won’t only be used by individual customers but also by financial advisers and in the case of many of us, by our superannuation fund, via … Continue reading “Forcing insurers to reveal rejected claims a win for consumers”
From The Conversation. In the past week, both major parties have made welcome, albeit tentative, commitments to tackle much-needed budget repair. The Turnbull government has moved quickly to lock in budget savings that Labor supported in the federal election campaign. Now Labor has signalled its support for the bulk of the government’s proposed changes to … Continue reading “A super test for Australia’s political system”
Roger Brake, Division Head, Tax Framework Division at The Treasury gave an interesting speech today “Tax Reform and Policy for an Economy in Transition”. Essentially, we face a number of headwinds, including falling productivity, shifting demographics, slower growth, more adverse terms of trade and rising personal income tax. I have selected some of the more … Continue reading “The Economic Foundations of Tax Reform”
From The Conversation. Australians often pride themselves on living in the land of the “fair go”. However, the available evidence shows the distribution of wealth in this country is no more egalitarian than the average for the OECD countries. In fact, depending on how wealth is measured, Australia may have above average inequality in wealth … Continue reading “Land of the ‘fair go’ no more”
From The Conversation. The proposed changes to commissions for selling life insurance may just tip the system back in favour of the customer. For years paying life insurance advisers by commission was not seen as a conflict of interest, even when it incentivised bad advice and continuous changing of policies. The changes will reduce the … Continue reading “More scrutiny needed on commissions paid to life insurance advisers”
From The Conversation. The Coalition has scraped into a second term. How credible is its economic growth program, and what else should it do to strengthen growth? The good news is that the transition from the mining boom is proceeding about as well as should have been expected. It is true that national income per … Continue reading “What the government should do now: economic growth”
From The Conversation. We have to move the housing conversation beyond a game of political football about negative-gearing winners and losers. Australia needs a bipartisan, long-term, housing policy. Why? Because we have a slow-burn, deepening crisis that is affecting Australians who are already highly vulnerable and disadvantaged. They include: 206,000 households on the waiting lists … Continue reading “Our cities will stop working without a decent national housing policy”