Martin North – Page 1040 – Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

Super Now Worth $1.87 Trillion – APRA

APRA just released their quarterly super statistics to September 2014. Superannuation assets totalled $1.87 trillion at the end of the September 2014 quarter. Over the 12 months to September 2014 this represents a 9.6 per cent increase. Total assets in MySuper products was $378.1 billion at the end of the September 2014 quarter. Over the 12 months to September 2014 this represents a 128.2 per cent increase.

Of these, $1.14 trillion are regulated by APRA and these grew by 2.2% since the previous quarter, whereas $ 557 million are self-managed super assets managed by the ATO and this grew by 0.2% since June 2014.

However, the number of SMSFs grew by 1.6% from the previous quarter, to stand at more than 539,000 funds.

Looking in more detail at the APRA regulated funds, with more than four members, there were $23.6 billion of contributions in the September 2014 quarter, up 7.2 per cent from the September 2013 quarter ($22.0 billion). Total contributions for the year ending September 2014 were $96.8 billion. Outward benefit transfers exceeded inward benefit transfers by $471 million in the September 2014 quarter. There were $15.1 billion in total benefit payments in the September 2014 quarter, an increase of 10.9 per cent from the September 2013 quarter ($13.7 billion). Total benefit payments for the year ending September 2014 were $57.1 billion. Net contribution flows (contributions plus net benefit transfers less benefit payments) totalled $8.0 billion in the September 2014 quarter, an increase of 9.6 per cent from the September 2013 quarter ($7.3 billion). Net contribution flows for the year ending September 2014 were $37.8 billion. Net contribution flows (contributions plus net benefit transfers less benefit payments) totalled $8.0 billion in the September 2014 quarter, an increase of 9.6 per cent from the September 2013 quarter ($7.3 billion). Net contribution flows for the year ending September 2014 were $37.8 billion. The graph below shows the composition of net contribution flows for each quarter from December 2008 to September 2014.

The annual industry-wide rate of return (ROR) for entities with more than four members for the year ending 30 September 2014 was 8.2 per cent. For the five-years to September 2014 the annualised geometric-average ROR was 6.9 per cent. The graph below shows the ROR for each quarter from December 2004 to September 2014. The rate of return (ROR) represents the net earnings on superannuation assets and measures the combined earnings of a superannuation fund’s assets across all its products and investment options.

As at the end of the September 2014 quarter, 51 per cent of the $1,219.7 million investments for entities with at least four members were invested in equities; 33 per cent of investments were invested in fixed income and cash investments; 12 per cent of investments were invested in property and infrastructure and 4 per cent were invested in other assets, including hedge funds, and commodities.

Note that small APRA funds (SAFs) and Single Member Approved Deposit funds (SMADFs) do not report quarterly to APRA. Therefore the quarterly assets of these funds are estimated based on the assets they report to APRA in their annual returns. This is done using a straight line growth methodology.

FOFA Disallowed In Senate

The government’s changes to FoFA are now under threat, following a move which saw four crossbench senators join with the Labor and the Greens to overturn the changes to the financial advice laws. This reverses some of the changes which as we discussed before were aligned with the major banks, and saw consumer protection eroded. As a result, Labor now appears to have secured the support it needs in the Senate to reverse the regulations. This overturns the earlier deal with the government and the minor Palmer United Party (Pup) in July to push through the Senate changes to Labor’s Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) laws.

Pup Senator Jacqui Lambie, and crossbenchers Ricky Muir and John Madigan, and independent senator Nick Xenophon have joined with the opposition on the issue. Xenophon called it “a coalition of common sense”.

“Our common, unequivocal objective is to have the government’s FoFA regulations disallowed today in the Senate because they are unambiguously bad for consumers”

ASIC commented:

ASIC notes the Senate has disallowed the Corporations Amendment (Streamlining Future of Financial Advice) Regulation 2014.

ASIC will take a practical and measured approach to administering the law as it now stands following the disallowance of the Corporations Amendment (Streamlining Future of Financial Advice) Regulation 2014. We will take into account that – as a result of the change to the law that applies to the provision of financial advice – many Australian financial services (AFS) licensees will now need to make systems changes. ASIC recognises this issue may arise in particular areas, including fee disclosure statements and remuneration arrangements.

We will work with Australian financial services licensees, taking a facilitative approach until 1 July 2015.

We believe this represents an important opportunity to revisit the fundamental flaws in FOFA as originally incarnated, and exacerbated by the recent government amendments. But is also continues the uncertainty around the nature of good financial advice, something which is critically important to get right, given the swelling superannuation balances in Australia, now worth $1.85 trillion.

RBA And Housing – Again

Glenn Stevens in an address to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) Annual Dinner today included some further important comments on the housing sector. He was at pains to highlight what potential upcoming changes on lending standards would not be focussing on. Rather, it is an attempt “to stretch out the upswing.” In other words, the RBA still wants to use housing as part of the ongoing economic growth lever, despite high debt levels and high house prices.

As for domestic sources of demand, an obvious contributor is the set of forces at work in the housing sector. Investment in new and existing dwellings is rising. It ought to be possible, if we are being sensible both on the demand management side and the supply side, for this to go further yet and, more importantly, for the level of activity to stay high for longer than the average cyclical experience. A high level of construction, maintained for a longer period of time, is vastly preferable to a very sharp boom and bust cycle. That alternative outcome might give us a higher peak in the near term, but then a slump in the housing sector at a time when the fall in mining investment is still occurring. A sustained period of strong construction will be more helpful from the point of view of encouraging growth in non-mining activity – and also, surely, from a wider perspective: housing our growing population in an affordable manner.

Considerations such as these are among the reasons we ought to take an interest in developments in dwelling prices, the flow of credit towards housing purchases, and the prudence with which these funds are advanced. It is perhaps opportune to offer a few observations on this topic.

Having fallen in late 2010 and 2011, dwelling prices have since risen, with the median price across the country up by around $100 000 – about 18 per cent – since the low point. Prices have risen in all capitals, with a fair degree of variation: the smallest increase has been in Canberra, at about 6 per cent, and the largest in Sydney, at 28 per cent.

Credit outstanding to households in total is rising at about 6–7 per cent per year. I see no particular concern with that. When we turn to the rate of growth of credit to investors in particular, we see that it has picked up to about 10 per cent per annum over the past six months, with investors accounting for almost half of the flow of new credit.

It is not clear whether this acceleration will continue or abate. It is not clear whether price increases will continue or abate. Furthermore, it is not to be assumed that investor activity is problematic, per se. A proportion of the investor transactions are financing additions to the stock of dwellings, which is helpful. It can also be observed that a bit more of the ‘animal spirits’ evident in the housing market would be welcome in some other sectors of the economy.

Nor, let me be clear, have we seen these dynamics, thus far, as an immediate threat to financial stability. The Bank’s most recent Financial Stability Review made that clear.

So we don’t just assume that all this is a terrible problem. By the same token, after all we have seen around the world over the past decade, it is surely imprudent not to question the comfortable assumption that it is all entirely benign. A situation where:

prices have already risen considerably in the two largest cities (where about a third of our population live)

prices are rising, at present, faster than income by a noticeable margin, and

an important area of credit growth has picked up to double-digit rates

should prompt a reasonable observer to ask the question whether some people might be starting to get just a little overexcited. Such an observer might want to satisfy themselves that lending standards are being maintained. And they might contemplate whether some suitably calibrated and focused action to help ensure sound standards, and that might lean into the price dynamic, may be appropriate. That is the background to the much publicised comment that the Bank was working with other agencies to see what more could be done on lending standards.

Let’s be clear what this is not about. It is not an attempt to restrain construction activity. On the contrary, it is an attempt to stretch out the upswing. Nor is it a return to widespread attempts to restrict lending via direct controls. That era, that some of us remember all too well, was one in which the price of credit was simply too low and credit growth too high all round. We don’t have that problem at present. That growth of credit to many borrowers remains moderate suggests that the overall price of credit is not too low. In fact the level of interest rates, although very low, is well warranted on macroeconomic grounds. The economy has spare capacity. Inflation is well under control and is likely to remain so over the next couple of years. In such circumstances, monetary policy should be accommodative and, on present indications, is likely to be that way for some time yet. But for accommodative monetary policy to support the economy most effectively overall, it’s helpful if pockets of potential over-exuberance don’t get too carried away.

Turning from housing investment to investment more generally, a more robust picture for capital spending outside mining would be part of a further strengthening of growth over time. Some of the key ingredients for this are in place. To date, there are some promising signs of stronger intentions, but not so much in the way of convincing evidence of actual commitment yet. That’s often the way it is at this point of the cycle. Firms wait for more evidence of stronger demand, but part of the stronger demand will come from them.

With respect to consumer demand, I should complete the picture by showing an updated version of the relevant chart from last time. In brief, not much has changed. The ratio of debt to income remains close to where it has been for some time. It’s rising a little at present because income growth is a bit below trend. Household consumption growth has picked up to a moderate pace and has actually run ahead of income over the past two years. Given that household wealth has risen strongly over that period, and interest rates are low, a modest decline in the saving rate is perhaps not surprising and indeed we think it could decline a little further in the period ahead. As I’ve argued in the past, however, we shouldn’t expect consumption to grow consistently and significantly faster than incomes like it did in the 1990s and early 2000s, given that the debt load is already substantial.

Court Approves Application Paving Path To Bank Fees Settlement

According to a media release from Maurice Blackburn, the Federal Court has today approved orders to help facilitate settlement negotiations in the bank fees class action against the National Australia Bank.

NAB has publicly indicated its commitment to exploring settlement opportunities, and law firm, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, worked with the bank in agreeing on today’s orders.

Today, in the Federal Court in Sydney, Justice Jacobson approved orders that will give all NAB customers a further opportunity to participate in this class action, and potentially to recover millions of dollars charged in exception fees.

Between 25 November this year and 27 January 2015, NAB customers who haven’t already registered their interest in joining the class action, will be able to do so.

Bendigo, Credit Unions Launch New Banking Alliance

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank and an Alliance of Australian credit unions today co-launched a new banking model that secures the independence and identities of the participating credit unions.

The Alliance model was developed by Bendigo and four credit unions – AWA, BDCU, Circle and Service One.

Under the Alliance model:

The loans and deposits of the participating credit unions will be transferred to Bendigo Bank, while reserves remain 100 per cent member-owned.
Alliance members continue to be serviced by their local branch staff.
In time, they willhave access to new products and technology from Bendigo, with theAlliance credit unions retaining pricing and loan approval discretions.
Bendigo will become the approved deposit-taking institution and will assumer esponsibility for compliance, systems and balance sheet management, with thisdelivering improved economies and cost savings.

The Agreement with Bendigo requires approval from 75 per cent of members voting at the respective credit union AGMs on 10 December 2014 and final approvals from APRA and the Federal Treasurer. The four credit unions combined have 39,000 members, $640 million in assets and $550 million in deposits.

The results from the recent DFA channel usage surveys highlights that players need to be able to move faster to take advantage of the emergence of the digital channels. Many smaller players, especially Credit Unions are hamstrung by their current technology portfolios, so this new model may offer new growth and service paths to the sector.

Central Bank Psychology

Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist of the Bank of England, will be speaking at the Royal College of Medicine conference on Leadership: stress and hubris. He will discuss how psychological biases can affect policy making, and how the institutional design of policy making committees at the Bank of England have been designed to counteract those effects.

In the speech, Andrew highlights four “cognitive ticks that can affect human decision making” that may be relevant for public policy making:

Preference biases – where the decision maker might put “personal objectives over societal ones, such as personal power or wealth”

Myopia biases – “people differ materially in their capacity to defer gratification” and studies suggest that people who show greater patience “outperform their impatient counterparts in everything from school examinations, to salaries, to reported life satisfaction”.

Hubris biases – over-confident individuals are “more likely to be promoted to positions of influence” but tend to pursue “over ambitious targets” like “undertaking over-complex company takeovers. That way nemesis lies”

Groupthink biases – people tend to adapt their view to confirm to those around them and also have a “tendency to search and synthesize information in ways which confirm their prior beliefs”.

Andrew then shows how policy making at the Bank of England has been organised to try to protect from these biases.

To tackle preference bias, the Bank’s does not set its own objectives. It has three policy making committees – for monetary policy (MPC), financial policy (FPC) and prudential regulation (PRA Board). In addition, “to ensure the actions of the Bank’s policy committees are well-aligned with society’s wishes” their targets are “set ex-ante in legislation by Parliament acting on behalf of society”.

To prevent myopia, the Bank of England has been made independent from government when choosing how to set monetary and financial policy to achieve their respective objectives. These decisions have been given to an institution “whose time horizon stretches beyond the political cycle”. Andrew suggests that central bank independence has been successful at taming “the inflation tiger” but he warns that “as some countries are finding today, the tiger is capable of biting back” in the form of low and falling inflation expectations. Andrew notes that while inflation expectations in the UK have held up pretty well, this is something he is “watching like a dove.”

To guard against Hubris at the Bank, “all policy decisions … are made by Committee rather than an individual” which “provides some natural safeguard against over-confidence bias”. Andrew notes that external MPC members have contributed importantly to the diversity of opinion on the committee “on average they have been around twice as likely as internals to dissent from monetary policy decisions”.

Finally to ward off groupthink, each member of the policy committees is individually accountable for their vote or view, and this should encourage “a variety of analytical perspectives”. That said Andrew notes that analysis of MPC minutes suggests that they did not devote enough time to discussing banking issues in the run up to the financial crisis, something that in hindsight, “looks like a collective analytical blind-spot”. He argues that despite all the changes to the Bank’s policy responsibilities since the crisis, “it is too soon to tell whether any remaining blind-spots remain”. Also, in his view “improvements to the Bank’s forecasting process have some considerable distance still to travel”.

Andrew concludes by highlighting a key new development at the Bank – a “cultural revolution” for bank research work. Rather than being used solely to “nourish and support the Bank’s policy thinking”, as has typically been the case in the past, future Bank research will instead be published that challenges the policy orthodoxy as often as supports it . “This research will hopefully act as spur and springboard for new policy thinking”. “It will act as another hopefully powerful, bulwark against over-confidence biases and groupthink.

ASIC To Monitor CBA Financial Planning Businesses

ASIC has appointed KordaMentha Forensic to examine two of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)’s financial planning arms’ compliance with new Australian financial services licence (AFS) conditions.

KordaMentha Forensic will report regularly to ASIC the results of their review of past activities by Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited (CFPL) and Financial Wisdom Limited (FWL) to identify high-risk advisers and affected customers, and CFPL and FWL’s compliance with the new conditions.

ASIC will release the findings, and CFPL and FWL will be required to address any deficiencies identified.

ASIC imposed the conditions on CFPL and FWL – and flagged it would appoint an external compliance expert – after a scheme developed to compensate customers of former CFPL advisers was not applied consistently across all affected customers of the two businesses. This inconsistency disadvantaged some customers. The conditions include CFPL and FWL offering customers up to $5,000 to have their financial advice independently reviewed.

ASIC Issues Further Guidance On Super Forecasts

ASIC has issued further guidance to assist superannuation fund trustees to provide their members with retirement estimates. The changes will allow a superannuation fund to include an estimate of the age pension which might be available to the member along with the member’s superannuation benefit at retirement. The changes are to ASIC’s existing relief for retirement estimates. A superannuation forecast is an estimate provided to a super fund member of the balance of their superannuation investment at retirement, provided in the form of a statement (retirement estimate) or a calculator. These estimates help members to engage with their superannuation. The revised guidance and relief also make a number of minor technical changes.

RBA’s Outlook for Australia’s Economy

In a speech today, Christopher Kent, Assistant Governor (Economic) outlined the current state of global and local economies, and commented on the outlook. Significantly he stressed that the RBA was looking for household expenditure to trickle through to stimulate business investment and thus lead to a lift in the labour market. However, noting the fall in average real income, and waning consumer confidence, we think this will take a long time, even at current very low interest rates. In addition, we have very high loan to income ratios, and this is absorbing household wealth significantly. Raises an interesting point, are the underlying economic assumptions valid this time around?

Our expectation is that growth will continue to be a bit below trend for a time, picking up gradually to be a bit above trend pace by 2016. And the unemployment rate is likely to remain elevated for some time.

The near-term weakness reflects a combination of three forces: a sharper decline in mining investment over the coming quarters than seen to date; the effects of the still high level of the exchange rate; and ongoing fiscal consolidation at state and federal levels. In contrast, resource exports are likely to make a further strong contribution to growth, with LNG exports expected to begin ramping up over coming quarters. At the same time, very low interest rates are working to support growth of household expenditure. In time, growth of household demand and the impetus to domestic demand provided by the exchange rate depreciation we have seen since early 2013 are expected to spur non-mining business investment.

Given this outlook, I want to touch on two relevant aspects of the business cycle that are important sources of uncertainty for our forecasts. One is related to household consumption, the other to business investment.

Household consumption

At this phase in the business cycle, it’s natural to worry about the possibility that consumption will be weighed down by slow growth in household incomes, driven in turn by the subdued state of the labour market. It is true that stronger growth of employment and wages would provide more support for consumption. However, that dynamic usually kicks in later in the cycle. In the meantime, it’s reasonable to expect that very low rates of interest will enable and encourage households to shift some expenditure from the future to now, including via higher asset prices. This would see a decline in the share of disposable income that households save (i.e. a lower saving ratio). There are limits to this, and it would be unwise to build a recovery on a foundation of a sharp decline in the saving ratio.

Our latest forecasts, however, suggest that there will be a gradual decline in the saving ratio over the next couple of years, of the same order of magnitude as we’ve already seen over the past couple of years.

A decline in the household saving ratio would be consistent with the tendency for labour market developments to lag developments in economic activity, including consumption, by a few quarters. Consumption and GDP growth tend to pick up ahead of an improvement in employment growth, which would in turn be expected to occur before we see wage growth start to return to more normal levels. This was the case during the recessionary episodes of the early 1990s and following the global financial crisis.

Non-mining business investment

I’ve spoken at length recently about the factors that might have led to subdued non-mining business investment over recent years.

In short, I concluded that this outcome had been consistent with a period of greater uncertainty and below-average confidence. Both of these have changed for the better more recently, yet firms still seem reluctant to take on risks associated with substantial new investment projects. If the appetite of businesses (and shareholders) for risk were to improve, investment could pick up. It’s hard to know when such a turning point in spirits might take place. But it is more likely when the fundamental determinants of investment are in place as they seem to be now. The ready availability of internal and external finance, at very low cost, is one such element of that. Also, there is the stronger growth of demand across the non-mining parts of the economy over the past year or so and measures of capacity utilisation have increased to around long-run average levels. So there is a reasonable prospect of business investment picking up, in time.

Even so, let me note some reasons why the anticipated recovery in non-mining business investment might not be quite as strong as in earlier episodes. But I will stress at the outset that if that comes to pass, it does not mean that growth of activity or of our prosperity need suffer.

One reason why investment in the non-mining sector might be lower than in the past is that service industries account for an increasing share of our economy – rising by about 12 percentage points in terms of the employment share over the past three decades. This is relevant to investment because service industries, on average, have much lower levels of capital relative to labour. So, in an economy in which services account for a higher share of economic activity, other things equal, the optimal (non-mining) capital stock should be lower than it otherwise would be (as a share of that economy). However, that doesn’t imply that GDP growth will be lower, nor does it suggest that the economy will be a less prosperous one. What matters for these things is whether we are taking advantage of profitable opportunities and using labour and capital in the most productive ways that we can. Also, it is worth emphasising that many services require high levels of human capital – in the form of education and training – which does not get picked up in investment as measured by the national accounts.

Investment today might also be lower (as a share of nominal GDP) than in the past for another reason. Over time there has been a sizeable decline in the price of many types of machinery and equipment (particularly those related to information and communications). So, businesses are able to spend less to obtain a given level of capital services. For example, they can purchase a lot more computing power for a given level of nominal spending. Once again, if this leads to lower investment (as a share of nominal GDP) than in the past it does not imply less output growth or lower prosperity. Indeed, given that Australia imports much of our machinery and equipment, a lower price of that capital is to our benefit.

Conclusions

The major advanced economies are in different stages of the business cycle. The recovery from recession is well established in the United States, but has a long way to go in the euro area. Japan has made some progress in reducing the extent of spare productive capacity, but inflation is still some way from the Bank of Japan’s target. Nevertheless, growth of Australia’s major trading partners has actually been around average for some time now and, as best we can tell, it is likely to remain at that rate in the year ahead.

Australian GDP growth has been a bit below trend pace over the past couple of years, consistent with a gradual rise in the unemployment rate. Much of the growth this past year owed to rising resource exports, although growth outside the mining sector also picked up. However, with mining investment set to fall more sharply over coming quarters, GDP growth is expected to be below trend for a time before gradually picking up to an above-trend pace by 2016.

The very low level of interest rates is supporting, and will continue to support, growth of household expenditure. In time, this is expected to support a recovery in non-mining business investment, and the economy more broadly, including an improvement in conditions in the labour market. If history is any guide, the recovery is likely to proceed in that order, from household expenditure to business investment to labour market conditions. History also suggests that a pick-up in business investment (outside of the resources sector) will come, in time. The fundamental forces are in place to support that recovery. And while I have suggested some reasons why business investment might not be quite as strong as past episodes of recovery might suggest, these don’t imply that the economy overall will be less strong than otherwise, but rather just one element of expenditure that we measure via the national accounts.

FCA fines five banks £1.1 billion for FX failings

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has imposed fines totalling $1.7 billion on five banks for failing to control business practices in their G10 spot foreign exchange (FX) trading operations.

Between 1 January 2008 and 15 October 2013, ineffective controls at the Banks allowed G10 spot FX traders to put their Banks’ interests ahead of those of their clients, other market participants and the wider UK financial system. The Banks failed to manage obvious risks around confidentiality, conflicts of interest and trading conduct.

These failings allowed traders at those Banks to behave unacceptably. They shared information about clients’ activities which they had been trusted to keep confidential and attempted to manipulate G10 spot FX currency rates, including in collusion with traders at other firms, in a way that could disadvantage those clients and the market.

Today’s fines are the largest ever imposed by the FCA, or its predecessor the Financial Services Authority (FSA), and this is the first time the FCA has pursued a settlement with a group of banks in this way. We have worked closely with other regulators in the UK, Europe and the US: today the Swiss regulator, FINMA, has disgorged CHF 134 million ($138 million) from UBS AG; and, in the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (‘the CFTC’) has imposed a total financial penalty of over $1.4 billion on the Banks and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (‘the OCC’) has imposed a total financial penalty of $700 million on Citibank N.A. and JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A.

Since Libor general improvements have been made across the financial services industry, and some remedial action was taken by the Banks fined today. However, despite our well-publicised action in relation to Libor and the systemic importance of the G10 spot FX market, the Banks failed to take adequate action to address the underlying root causes of the failings in that business.