Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
"Intelligent Insight"
NAB released its trading update today. Overall cash profit was a little below expectations, and loss provisions were up. Looking in more detail, revenue rose approximately 4%, but after excluding gains on the UK Commercial Real Estate (CRE) loan portfolio sale and SGA asset sales, on a like for like basis, increased approximately 2% thanks … Continue reading “NAB 2015 First Quarter Trading Update”
DFA has just launched a New Household Finance Confidence Index, and so we are going to explain how the index works, and also discuss the initial results. This brief video covers both. DFA has been surveying households on aspects of their finances for many years. We have 26,000 households in our sample at any one … Continue reading “DFA’s New Household Finance Confidence Index Falls”
Fitch Ratings “Global Housing and Mortgage Outlook” suggests House price growth is expected to moderate across the Asia-Pacific region in 2015, driven by government regulatory pressures, tightened affordability and gradual interest-rate rises. The growth slowdown will be led by Australia, where national house prices are forecast to rise 4% in 2015, down from 7% in … Continue reading “House Price Growth Set To Fall – Fitch”
Fresh on the heels of the FSI report, the core thesis of which is that the Australian Banks are too big to fail, so capital buffers must be increased to protect Australia from potential risks in a down turn (a “mild” crash could lead to the loss of 900,000 jobs and a $1-2 trillion or … Continue reading “Housing Finance Regulation – Tweaked, Not Reformed”
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has today written to authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) outlining further steps it plans to take to reinforce sound residential mortgage lending practices. These steps have been developed following discussions with other members of the Council of Financial Regulators. In the context of historically low interest rates, high levels of … Continue reading “APRA Reinforces Sound Residential Mortgage Lending Practices”
David Murray’s Speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia ‘Supporting Australia’s Economic Growth‘ coincided with the release of the Final Report of the Financial System Inquiry. First let me thank CEDA for being our host, once again, as we release the Final Report of the Financial System Inquiry. I’d also like to recognise … Continue reading “FSI – David Murray’s Speech”
The final report of the Financial Systems Inquiry was released on Sunday. We already provided a summary of the 44 recommendations and discussed some of the specific proposals. It is of course a report to Government, so still a political process will run before we see what translates into policy, though some recommendations – for … Continue reading “Reflections on FSI”
The FSI report recommends the removal of the exception to the general prohibition on direct borrowing for limited recourse borrowing arrangements by superannuation funds. This would stop property investments via SMSFs, a growing trend, or shares. Other than this, SMSF’s received an endorsement, as a legitimate savings vehicle for retirement (but not necessarily as a … Continue reading “FSI – SMSFs Banned From Leveraged Property Investment”
SocietyOne, Australia’s first and largest Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lender has announced the successful completion of a Series B capital raise with a consortium of eminent Australian investors, made up of Consolidated Press Holdings (CPH), News Corp Australia and Australian Capital Equity. The consortium will acquire 25 per cent of the business initially. Matt Symons, Chief Executive … Continue reading “Local P2P On The Up”
The RBA today published a paper on “Mortgage-related Financial Difficulties: Evidence from Australian Micro-level Data.” Although default rates in Australia are lower than in many other countries, their research paper delved into the different types of mortgage lending, using loan-level pool data provided by MARQ Services and concluded that higher LVR lending, and interest only … Continue reading “High LVR Lending More Risky – RBA”