Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
"Intelligent Insight"
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”
From The Conversation. Much of the focus on the insider trading case of Oliver Curtis has been on the titillating details of the man’s social life, his wife and past relationship with his partner in crime John Hartman. However all this misses the point, it’s not about what the pair gained and stand to lose … Continue reading “Insider trading is greedy, not glamorous, and it hurts us all”
From The Conversation. The idea of separating out the arms of the “Big Four” banks like insurance and superannuation from their core banking business is gaining traction in Australia. It featured in the Greens’ banking and finance election policy. However this is not a new idea; Australia is just catching up to banking reforms already … Continue reading “It’s time we broke up the retail arms of Australia’s Big Four banks”
From The Conservation. There are three critical tests for this year’s budget. Is it serious about repairing Australia’s ongoing structural budget deficits? Does it make much of a difference to economic growth? And is it fair? Budget repair Over the last year, the bottom line got worse. The long-promised return to surplus receded another year … Continue reading “Three critical tests for Budget 2016: how does it fare?”
In the RBA Bulletin, released today, there is a section which shows major bank margins have improved. Essentially, the story is one of falling deposit rates, plus change in mix, and rises in home lending rates independent of the cash rate in recent months. Consumers are bearing the burden whilst big business lending rates and … Continue reading “Bank Spreads Have Improved, Thanks To More Expensive Home Loans”
From The Conversation. It’s not every day that I feel the need to fight with Martin Wolf. The Financial Times commentator is an eminently respectable analyst and most of the time makes good sense. However, last week he sort of lost the plot. Mr Wolf has written that technology will do to finance what it … Continue reading “Uberbanking, with limits”
From The Conversation. The Australian banking industry is a classic economic ‘oligopoly’ with the so-called ‘Four Pillars’ or ‘Big Four’ (National Australia Bank (NAB), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), ANZ and Westpac) dominating not only the banking sector but the whole financial sector and arguably the economy. The big four banks account for over 25% … Continue reading “Banking outlook: threats from technology, burst of housing bubble, end of mining boom”