The Conversation – Page 23 – Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog

Business leaders are betting we will spend more

When Australian companies report results they typically include an outlook statement from the business’ leaders, giving investors some guidance about their expectations for the future. They issue these forward-looking statements with some caution as investors might rely on them, and the law requires that they be based on “reasonable grounds”.

The Conversation’s Face Value uses sentiment analysis to try and determine how Australian business leaders are feeling about the future.

A contradiction is emerging between how consumers should be feeling and what the heads of companies expect them to do. What we know about low wages growth and underemployment seems to suggest households would be tightening the purse strings but the sentiment of business leaders is very positive in sectors relying on consumer spending.

Wages are struggling to keep pace with the prices of the things we buy and average hours worked (per worker) have also been trending down or flat at best. This is not a picture of robust consumer finances.

On top of this retailers are facing the threat of competition from US giant Amazon. Yet according to our analysis of the outlook of leaders of Australia’s ASX 200 companies, positivity has increased.

The sentiment of business leaders has remained positive and improved over the past 12 months according to our analysis. The “polarity” score, which measures whether the sentiment is positive or negative, has increased from 0.11 to 0.15 (a statistically significant improvement).

We also looked at how subjective these statements were and found there’s been no significant increase in how opinionated these statements are.

Our findings also mirror other business confidence surveys and even the Reserve Bank of Australia’s own outlook, which also paints a buoyant picture. The RBA expects growth in the economy to strengthen gradually to be around 3% in the first half of 2018. The RBA expects wage growth to gradually pick up over the next year or two and for average hours worked to increase somewhat.

Similarly, the Westpac-AusChamber Actual Composite index strengthened in June 2017, rising 1.8 points to 65.0. This factored in a strengthening in the labour market, as manufacturing firms plan to hire more workers and manufacturing wages rise. And the NAB business confidence survey also reveals that business conditions and confidence are improving.

The positive outlook for economic growth according to the RBA is driven by resource exports notably iron ore and liquid natural gas (LNG) production, household consumption including retail sales, and non-mining business investment. The RBA also expects wage growth to soon pick up.

This was led by businesses like JB HiFi (0.41), TabCorp (0.23) and Flight Centre (0.18); and also consumer staples led by Ardent Leisure (0.50), Treasury Wine Estates (0.38) and Coca-Cola Amatil (0.18).

The outlook for manufacturing is also positive due to a range of factors such as infrastructure spending by governments, stronger world growth, and improved international competitiveness due to a lower currency, commercial construction and home building, according to the Westpac-AusChamber index. This is supported by our analysis which found stronger than average sentiment from business leaders in the materials sector (0.17), through companies such as Amcor (0.26).

Perhaps the gloomy slow wage growth and underemployment will catch up to the more positive sentiment on consumer goods and services in company reports. Or this contradiction might simply reflect the high uncertainty in the global environment.

Consumers certainly seem a little confused: the weekly ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer confidence Index ticked up slightly last week but has jumped around in recent months. Certainly the positive sentiment from business leaders consumer about consumer spending we see in company reports seems optimistic.

Authors: Ross Guest, Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow, Griffith University; Ben Hachey, Honorary Associate, School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney.

APRA inquiry into CBA is the new comedy in town

From The Conversation.

Just when you thought it could not get any more bizarre, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) announces it will open its new season with an inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), specifically focusing on “governance, culture and accountability frameworks and practices within the group”.

This is an unexpected twist in the long running farce that is Australian banking regulation.

And the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, has weighed in on cue to lead the booing of CBA with as nice a piece of comedic irony that one could see anywhere, even in London’s West End:

Australia’s banks are well capitalised, well regulated and financially sound. However, there have been too many cases and events that have damaged their reputation and standing in the eyes of many Australians, that warrants our regulators taking action now.

The well-regulated bit brought the house down as did the next gag – that the inquiry showed a banking royal commission was not needed as the government and regulatory agencies were already taking action against the banks.

Yeah, already taking action – just five minutes ago!

The audience would have roared with laughter, especially when told they would not have to pay to see the show, but that CBA would be picking up the tab. Ice-creams all around at the interval, and CBA can pay for it out of the bonuses that have just been taken back from the departing CEO and the management chorus line.

But the opening of this new show raises some questions for the producers. Why now? Why CBA? And why, of all people, APRA?

Why now is obvious. A few weeks ago, a new sheriff in town, AUSTRAC, pointed out some serious criminals had been using the bank as a money laundromat.

At first the board ignored this upstart, but were woken out of their cosy slumber when AUSTRAC had the temerity to take them to court. Their usual first reaction, of fighting to the end (with their shareholders’ money) won’t work this time and they have been scrambling ever since.

Why CBA? Ineptitude mixed with hubris. There has been a long litany of scandals where CBA has been part of the cast, but like the heroine of the old movies, in the past it had been able to escape just before the train ran over it. This time the CEO forgot to bring the knife to cut the ropes and CBA has been squashed.

But why no other banks? Why not indeed, as the other three of the big four banks, like CBA, have been part of a long-running production in the Federal Court to do with the small matter of manipulating interest rate benchmarks. The banks had hoped this show would have closed by now, like the foreign exchange benchmark scandal, with a payment of a token gold coin donation.

But the big question on the audience’s lips is why APRA?

In Australia, the conduct regulator, that is the “culture guy”, is supposed to be the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) but this time it does not get a look in – why?

It’s because the government doesn’t like ASIC. Its leading man, Chairman Greg Medcraft, has already been told he is no longer needed and the new leading man has not been announced yet.

In very bad timing for the government, the scandal has blown up just before the rumoured replacement could be unveiled. Try that move today and the critics would go feral.

Not that APRA has great credentials on “culture” matters. It is made up of more technicians than creative types. As the official insurance regulator, APRA missed the whole bit about culture when the CommInsure scandal blew up. And critics have been very quiet on the fact that money laundering is part of APRA’s operational risk mandate. But, like Marcel Marceau, APRA doesn’t say much about anything such as the fact that bank bill swap rate benchmark manipulation is also part of its operational risk responsibilities.

As for “culture”, APRA actually tried out for that role a few years ago, but wasn’t called back for a final audition – the leading role went to ASIC but at the time it was not bent out of shape too much.

In the UK, the so-called “twin peaks” of banking regulation, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), actually talk to one another and work on common problems, such as whistleblowing.

In Australia, APRA is the prudential regulator which means its main job is to ensure that banks can meet their “financial promises”. By starting this inquiry, does APRA really want us to believe that the board and management at CBA pose a threat to the ability of the largest bank in Australia to repay its financial commitments? Surely not! But maybe APRA has been pushed into this unusual role by backstage prompting from the Treasurer – anything to head off a royal commission.

So why has this inquiry not been shared between ASIC and APRA, surely in this case the combined expertise would help create a truly independent report? The two regulators are officially part of the Council of Financial Regulators (CFR), which is headed by the RBA, and whose role is to coordinate “Australia’s main financial regulatory agencies” – boy if ever cooperation was needed.

So off we go with a six month run of a completely new production. The script hasn’t been written yet (terms of reference to follow) – maybe they are going to workshop it first? The actors are already lining up for auditions and venues are being hired. The problem is we don’t know whether it will be farce or fiasco, but it will definitely run and run.

Author: Pat McConnell, Honorary Fellow, Macquarie University Applied Finance Centre, Macquarie University

APRA could have investigated CBA years ago

From The Conversation.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has become the second regulator to independently investigate the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Experts say the inquiry puts the regulator in the tricky position of being tough on bank scandals but juggling its close relationship with the government and the CBA.

The inquiry follows civil proceedings launched against the bank for being complicit in money laundering.

“APRA cannot leave this deterioration in the public’s trust and confidence in our banks to fester for any longer,” says Eliza Wu, from the University of Sydney.

The investigation will be run by an independent panel, appointed by APRA. It will run for six months after which the regulator will receive a final report, to be made public.

The inquiry focus will be on governance, culture and accountability frameworks at the CBA. APRA Chairman Wayne Byres said:

A key objective of the inquiry will be to provide CBA with a set of recommendations for organisation and cultural change, where that is identified as being necessary.

The inquiry will have the power to compel CBA employees to provide information at its request, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in a confidentiality agreement. But it will not have the power to compel witness statements from people outside the organisation, which a royal commission would have.

The government has come out in support of the inquiry. But the timing of the response has raised questions about whether the regulator should have acted sooner.

“Morrison has stated that APRA is independent, and that this is APRA’s decision, not his. But the timing raises questions in light of the Treasurer’s obvious pique, motivated no doubt by the political capital that the Turnbull government has expended resisting a royal commission – no mean feat for a government with a one seat majority and trailing badly in the polls,” says Andy Schmulow, from the University of Western Australia.

APRA’s ability to prosecute the CBA relies on prudential standards which set out minimum foundations for good governance. But Schmulow says APRA has had many opportunities to investigate this, since its introduction in 2015.

“The question is whether APRA’s announcement of an inquiry should have come earlier – possibly years earlier – and if so whether APRA’s announcement today is mere coincidence, or whether it is responding to pressure from the Treasurer,” he says.

Academics agree that APRA is the best agency to run an inquiry on the CBA, due to the agency’s close relationship with the banks and knowledge of the industry.

“APRA is really the only agency which could do it. It already has a team focused on each of the banks. None of the other agencies has any deep knowledge of how banks work,” says Rodney Maddock, from Monash University.

“The banks and the regulators are involved in regular two-way conversations. Such interaction is essential to the way Australia supervises its banks, rather than launching legal cases at each other. Most countries regard our regulatory model as one of the best in the world.”

The CBA has faced a series of scandals involving its insurance and financial advice and planning arms and most recently for not complying with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act.

The inquiry puts the regulator in a difficult trade-off in dealing with threats to financial security and creating unfair competition, if its perceived to be focusing too much scrutiny on one bank.

“If APRA is not seen to be asking serious questions into how this could have come about and to conduct a critical evaluation of CBA’s risk management framework and the checks and balances that are meant to be in place, there is a danger that depositors may start pulling out their savings… we end up with a liquidity drainage out of our banking system and a major disruption to credit supply,” Eliza Wu says.

CBA is the largest bank in Australia by total assets and by the amount of deposit funding that it has.

The inquiry might also have ramifications for other cases yet to be launched by international regulators against the bank.

“Reports indicate that Hong Kong and Malaysian authorities are requesting information from CBA about cross-border anti-money laundering and counter terrorism failures. What would be of even greater concern is that any transactions that involve US dollars would have to go through and be cleared in New York, and in the past the US authorities have taken steps against, among others, Australian entities for illegal conduct. This includes conduct that went nowhere near the US. So this potentially opens multiple battle fronts for CBA both foreign and domestic,” says Andy Schmulow.

Author: Jenni Henderson, Editor, Business and Economy, The Conversation

How governments have widened the gap between generations in home ownership

From The Conversation.

Various government policies have fuelled the demand for housing over time, expanding the wealth of older home owners and pushing it further and further beyond the reach of young would-be home buyers. A new study highlights this divide between millennials and their boomer parents.

The study is part of a Committee of Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) report called Housing Australia. It compares trends in property ownership across age groups over a period of three decades.

Between 1982 and 2013, the share of home owners among 25-34 year olds shrunk the most, by more than 20%. On the other hand, the share of home owners among those aged 65+ years has risen slightly.

The rate of renting has spiralled among young people. By 2013, renting had outstripped home ownership among 25-34 year olds.

Same policies, different impacts on generations

There is undoubtedly a growing intergenerational divide in access to the housing market. The timing of policy reforms has been a major driver of this widening housing wealth gap.

Negative gearing has long advantaged property investors, potentially crowding out aspiring first home buyers. While negative gearing was briefly quarantined in 1985, this was repealed after just two years.

The appeal of negative gearing grew as financial deregulation spread rapidly during the 70s and 80s. This deregulation widened access to mortgage finance, but also pushed real property prices to ever higher levels.

In 1999, the Ralph review paved the way for the reform of capital gains tax on investment properties. Instead of taxing real capital gains at investors’ marginal income tax rates, only 50% of capital gains were taxed from 1999 onwards, albeit at nominal values.

The move, designed to promote investment activity, actually aggravated housing market volatility. The confluence of negative gearing benefits and the capital gains tax discount encouraged investors to go into more debt to finance buying property, taxed at discounted rates. The First Home Owners Grant, introduced in 2000, was another lever that increased demand. In the face of land supply constraints, these sorts of subsidies were likely to result in rising house prices.

Other policy reforms, while not directly housing related, have also affected young people’s opportunities to accumulate wealth.

The Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) was introduced in 1989, at a time when many Gen X’s were entering tertiary education. This ended access to the free education that their boomer parents enjoyed.

HECS parameters were tightened over time. And in 1997, HECS contribution rates rose for new students and repayment thresholds were reduced.

Of course, the 1992 introduction of the superannuation guarantee would have boosted Gen X’s retirement savings relative to boomers. However, these savings are not accessible till the compulsory preservation age, so can’t be used now to buy a house.

All these policies have clearly had varying generational impacts, adversely affecting home purchase opportunities for younger generations while delivering significant wealth expansion to older home owners.

An intergenerational housing policy lens

A new housing landscape has emerged in recent years. It is marked by precarious home ownership and long-term renting for young people.

It’s also dominated by a growing wealth chasm – not just between the young and old – but also between young people who have access to wealth transfers from affluent parents and those who do not.

The majority of housing related policies do not consider issues of equity across generations. There are currently very few examples of potential housing reforms that can benefit multiple generations.

However, there is one policy that could – the abolition of stamp duties. It would remove a significant barrier to downsizing by seniors.

The equity released from downsizing would boost retirement incomes for seniors, while freeing up more housing space for young growing families. Negative impacts on revenue flowing to government could be mitigated by a simultaneous implementation of a broad based land tax. This would in turn push down house prices.

As life expectancies increase, the need for governments to take into account policy impact on different generations is critical. On the other hand, policies that take a short-term view will only worsen intergenerational tensions and entrench property ownership as a marker of distinction between the “haves” and “have nots” in Australia.

Author: Rachel Ong, Deputy Director, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University

Why investor-driven urban density is inevitably linked to disadvantage

From The Conversation.

The densification of Australian cities has been heralded as a boon for housing choice and diversity. The up-beat promotion of “the swing to urban living” by one of Australia’s leading developer lobby groups epitomises the rhetoric around this seismic shift in housing.

Glossy advertisements for luxury living in our city centres and suburbs adorn the property pages of our newspapers.

Brochures boast of breathtaking city views from uppers storeys and gush about amenity, lifestyle and “liveability” – often touting the benefits of adjacent public infrastructure investments (but please don’t mention “value sharing”).

Depictions of attractive younger people, occasionally clutching a smiling infant, are prominent as the image of all things new, urban and desirable.

Long gone are the days when the manifestations of property marketeers’ imaginations were restricted to images of low-density master-planned estates on the urban fringe. We hardly ever hear about these nowadays.

There’s truth in the claims that housing choice and diversity have indeed widened in the last few decades as a result. The statistics clearly show a much greater spread of dwelling options in our cities.

The rise and rise of the apartment block

Apartments now account for 28% of housing in Sydney and 15% in Melbourne. As the maps below show, most recent growth in apartment stock is clearly in and around the inner city. Yet even the more distant suburbs have had an increase in higher-density residential development.
Changes in the number of flats and apartments, 2011 to 2016, in Sydney (above) and Melbourne (below). Data: ABS Census 2011, 2016, Author provided
Data: ABS Census 2011, 2016, Author provided
For many, inner-city apartment living is clearly a preferred choice for the stage in their life when an upcoming, “vibrant” neighbourhood is attractive. High-density urban renewal has been a boon for hipsters and students alike.

But the issue of choice needs to be unpacked carefully. For many others, the “swing to urban living” is more of a necessity.

True, the surge in apartment building has put many properties onto the market to rent or buy that are clearly cheaper than houses in the same suburb. From that point of view, they have added to the affordability of these neighbourhoods.

However, affordable to whom is an open question. At A$850,000 and upwards for a standard two-bedder in Waterloo, South Sydney, and $500,000 or more in Melbourne’s Docklands for a similar property, these are not exactly a cheap option for anyone on a low income.

But other than in the prestige areas where higher-income downsizers and pied-à-terre owners can be enticed to buy in some comfort, much of what is being built is straightforward “investor grade product” – flats built to attract the burgeoning investment market.

It can be argued that the investor has always been a major target of apartment developers, even in the 1960s and 1970s when strata units became common, particularly in Sydney. But it is even more so today.

Despite the clamour to control overseas investors perceived to be flooding the market, the bulk of investors are home grown. We don’t need to rehearse the debates on the factors that have fuelled this splurge, but clearly the development industry has been savvy to the possibilities of this market.

In the last decade, backed by state planning authorities and politicians desperate to claim they have “solved” housing affordability by letting apartment building rip, developers have got involved on an unprecedented scale. The figures bear this out: in 2016, for the first time, Australia built more apartments than houses. The majority end up for rent.

Problematic products with too few protections

In the rush, we, the housing consumer, have been offered a motley range of new housing with a series of escalating problems. Leaving aside amateur management by owners’ bodies in charge of multi-million-dollar assets, problems of short-term holiday lettings and neighbour disputes, there are more serious concerns over build quality, defective materials and fire compliance.

The apartment market has been left wide open for poor-quality outcomes by building industry deregulation. This includes:

moves toward complying development approval for high-rise;

self-certification of building components;

complex design and non-traditional building methods;

relaxation of defect rectification requirements;

long chains of sub-contractors;

poor oversight by local planners and authorities; and

cheap or non-compliant fittings and finishes.

Plus there’s the rush to get buildings up and sold off. Not to mention fly-by-night “phoenix” developers who vanish as soon as the last flat is occupied, never to be found when the defects bills come in.

The lack of consumer protection in this market is astounding. The average toaster comes with more consumer protection – at least you can get your money back if the product fails.

‘Vertical slums’ in the making

These chickens will surely come home to roost in the lower end of the market, which will never attract the wealthy empty-nesters or cashed-up young professionals with the resources to ensure quality outcomes.

In Melbourne, space and design standards, including windowless bedrooms, have come under critical scrutiny, as has site cramming. Tall apartment blocks stand cheek-by-jowl in overdeveloped inner-city precincts.

At least New South Wales has State Environmental Planning Policy 65, which regulates space and amenity standards, and the BASIX environmental standard to prevent the more egregious practices.

But people are most likely to confront the problems of density in the many thousands of new units adorning precincts around suburban rail stations and town centres. These have been built under the uncertain logic of “transport-orientated development”, often replacing light industrial or secondary commercial development.

These developments attract a mixed community of lower-income renters. Many are recently arrived immigrants and marginal home buyers – often first-timers. Many have young children, as these units are the only option for young families to buy or rent in otherwise unaffordable markets. Overall, though, renters predominate.

What will be the trajectory of these blocks, once the gloss wears off and those who can move on do so? You only have to look at the previous generation of suburban walk-up blocks in these areas to find the answer.

Far from bastions of gentrification, the large multi-unit buildings in less prestigious locations will drift inexorably into the lower reaches of the private rental market.

Town centres like Liverpool, Fairfield, Auburn, Bankstown and Blacktown in Sydney point the way. The cracks in the density juggernaut are already showing in many of the more recently built blocks in these areas – literally, in many cases.

This inexorable logic of the market will create suburban concentrations of lower-income households on a scale hitherto experienced only in the legacy inner-city high-rise public housing estates.

With the latter being systematically cleared away, the formation of vertical slums of the future owned by the massed ranks of unaccountable, profit-driven investor landlords is a racing certainty. The consequences are all too easy to imagine.

The call for greater regulation of apartment, planning, design and construction is being heard in some quarters. The 2015 NSW Independent Review of the Building Professionals Act highlights these concerns.

But don’t hold your breath for rapid reform. No-one wants to kill the goose that’s laying so many golden eggs for the development industry and government alike – especially in inflated stamp-duty receipts.

The market has a habit of self-regulating on supply. Evidence of a marked downturn in apartment building is a clear sign of that. But don’t expect the market to self-regulate on quality, at least with the current highly fragmented, confusing (not least to builders and bureaucrats), under-resourced and largely unpoliced regulatory system.

The legacy of this entirely avoidable crisis is completely predictable, but will be for future generations to pick up

Author: Bill Randolph, Director, City Futures – Faculty Leadership, City Futures Research Centre, Urban Analytics and City Data, Infrastructure in the Built Environment, UNSW

This is why apartment living is different for the poor

From The Conversation.

There’s been a lot of talk about apartment living of late. Whether it’s millennials who can’t afford to buy a house, downsizers making a lifestyle change, owner-occupiers struggling to get defective buildings fixed, or foreign investors buying into new development, there’s no shortage of opinions and interest.

Except for one group: lower-income and vulnerable residents.

In Greater Sydney, the latest census data show that almost one in five households (17%) living in apartments and townhouses have weekly household incomes of less than A$649.

Among this group the largest sub-group (36%) live in private rental housing. That’s more than 72,000 households living on $649 or less per week in a housing market where average weekly rents for apartments are $550.

Our research for Shelter NSW identifies multiple challenges such households face.

Why does this matter?

It matters because some things about apartment and townhouse living are fundamentally different to living in a house. These differences have particular impacts on lower-income and vulnerable people living in higher-density housing.

The significant differences include:

You live closer to your neighbours, so it’s more likely you’ll see, hear or meet them.

You share services and spaces with neighbours, from gardens to laundries to lifts.

You have to co-operate with other residents and owners to manage and pay for building operation and upkeep.

If you live in a private apartment building then the fact that a large proportion of apartments are sold to investors and rented out will likely have three key impacts on you:

Developers often cater for investors when designing new apartment buildings, so you will likely find a limited variation in apartment designs and sizes available.

Resident turnover in your building may be high, as private renters move more frequently.

Tensions between owner-occupiers and investor-owners may result in disagreements and disputes over budgeting and maintenance.

While these unique aspects of higher-density living can be tricky for anyone, they present particular challenges for lower-income and vulnerable residents. They tend to have less choice about their living arrangements, so they can’t up and move to better-designed, constructed and managed properties if things aren’t working out.

Building flaws affects some residents in particular

Poor building quality is one of the major issues in high-density development in Australia. The problems relate to design, defects and maintenance.

The design issues include noise disturbances as a result of poor design, inadequate solar access and cross ventilation, the availability and flexibility of shared spaces, and safety and security considerations.

Another issue is design that fails to help meet the needs of particular groups (such as people with a disability, and families with children).

Beyond design, the construction quality of higher-density developments is a major issue in Australia. Key concerns include the quantity and severity of building defects, as well as the difficulties owners face having defects fixed.

Among the problems are quality of workmanship, management of construction, private certification, limited warranties and the often-prohibitive cost of legal action.

As with poor design, lower-income households are particularly susceptible to construction issues. This is because there are more incentives to cut corners when constructing more affordable housing. Examples include rushing jobs, hiring cheaper but less experienced tradespeople, or using substandard materials.

Once residents move in, negotiating to fix defects is particularly difficult for private renters, as they typically must go through the real estate agent or landlord. This means renters may be stuck with unsatisfactory living conditions.

Lower-income renters are also likely to be over-represented in poorly maintained buildings, as these are usually cheaper to rent. Compared to a detached house, maintenance in higher-density properties is complicated by the complexity of the buildings themselves and the governance structures.

As a result, required maintenance work is often not carried out, or is reactive rather than proactive. This is especially true in buildings occupied by lower-income renters with no direct recourse to the strata committee. They often cannot afford to move and may fear retaliatory rent increases if they report maintenance issues.

Social relations can be challenging

Neighbour disputes happen everywhere, but evidence suggests disputes are more common in areas with more lower-income and vulnerable residents and with more apartments.

Common causes of neighbour conflict in higher-density housing reflect different expectations about noise levels, parking practices, or spending on maintenance and improvements.

Neighbour disputes can have significant impacts on health. This potentially counteracts the health benefits associated with the walkable nature of many higher-density neighbourhoods.
When disputes arise, the number of stakeholders involved complicates efforts to find a resolution. They might include renters, resident owners, investor owners, building managers, strata managers and strata committee members.

Research with strata residents in New South Wales shows residents find formal dispute resolution mechanisms complex and slow. Most disputes are resolved informally.

Lower-income residents, and renters in particular, are likely to have less influence over the outcomes of such processes.

Fostering positive neighbour relations can be more difficult where resident turnover is high, such as in buildings dominated by private renters. It is also more difficult in poorly designed buildings without quality shared spaces.

New norm promotes inequity

Apartment living is the new norm in Australia. As the nursery rhyme says, when it’s good it’s very, very good, but when it’s bad it’s horrid. If these homes are poorly designed, poorly built, poorly maintained or poorly managed, they are poor places to live.

The market-led housing model that underpins Australia’s compact city policies has meant that people with less money get a poorer product. Few planners or politicians have adequately acknowledged these inequities.

Authors: Hazel Easthope, Senior Research Fellow, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW; Laura Crommelin, Research Associate, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW; Laurence Troy, Research Fellow, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW

How Australia’s apartment frenzy echoes the 1870s cattle boom

From The Conversation.

Imagine in the years ahead that you were to come across a photograph of the Melbourne streetscape from 2017. Two things would immediately signify it as being from today – the number of cranes across the skyline and at street level, the construction hoardings glistening with glamourous promise.

Melbourne is now experiencing the most dramatic real estate boom in living history – this feverish development has seen 13,000 new apartments constructed each year for the past two years with plans for another 22,000 over the next few years.

And like that photograph of the 2017 streetscape, one can also take another kind of record, a typographic snapshot. Fonts can tell us something about a time and a place. Within the real estate industry, this is centred around branding – and more specifically those ubiquitous logos weaved throughout our urban landscape.

In an age when each individual building demands a logo as much as an address, and often these congeal (8 Breese, 85 Spring Street) or fill us with an aspiration to be somewhere else (West Village, Haus), the end result is a seemingly never-ending array of marks all jostling to dazzle us with their glamour and aspiration. But is this massive explosion of logos a new thing?

The clearest way to see any of these connections is to look across other periods of economic boom. The oversupply of livestock in the 1870s is one such time. During this period the plentiful supply of cattle necessitated that the ownership of herds be strongly signified and differentiated in the marketplace. At that time the most effective way to do this was through branding – quite literally, a hot iron branded seared into the rumps of the livestock.
Cattle branding, 1864. S. T. G./State Library of Victoria
By the latter half of the 19th century the simpler alphabetical brands had all been used up so the designs became increasingly complex and idiosyncratic. These plentiful livestock brands began to do odd things – letters would be turned upside down or flipped, there would be strange little icons of hats, anchors, fish, shields, glasses and other even more abstract shapes.

When placed alongside the embellished brands extolling the contemporary real estate boom, some strong design similarities become clear. It seems that the imperative to produce a distinct identity seems to bridge 140 years with ease. These design similarities hint at the underlying economic cycle, boom followed by bust.
 

The top line are real estate brands from 2016 whilst the bottom line are cattle brands from 1870. Apartment brands from left to right: Nest at the Hill (Doncaster); Queens Place (CBD); Reflections (North Melbourne); Capital Grand (South Yarra) Author provided
Who we are and want we want

The logos that festoon the hoardings across our streets tell us a great deal about who we are, and more specifically, what we want. Script typefaces (those based on handwriting) tell us that we are in an age where people yearn for the authentic, the handmade, a personal connection. The use of fonts, patterns and symbols as well as specific colours may offer us an insight into what cultural shorthand is being used to speak to many prospective buyers.

It is that supreme marker of modernity – sans serif fonts – that above all others expresses our shared contemporary notions of style and urbane aspiration. These fonts, such as “helvetica”, do not use the ornamental ends of letters that serif fonts, like the one you are reading on, include. We take in and process all of these factors in the split second that we consume a logo.

Logos, and the typefaces from which they are composed, have always spoken of the times we live in – including the reflection of economic and social patterns. The mechanised efficiencies of the early 20th century were met by a geometric simplicity in letterforms, whilst the 1970s sexual revolution coincidentally saw spacing between letterforms become very intimate, coupled as it was with the advent of phototypesetting, a process soon superseded by computers.

Booms have a habit of producing an oversupply. And this oversupply calls for some kind of unique differentiation. Differentiation calls for creativity. This is where branding comes in. Trying to tell a herd of cows apart in the 1870s is perhaps no easier than trying to differentiate the often generic architectural forms of apartment developments built today.
Brands of the cattle boom (black) contrasted with contemporary real estate (white)
The old marketing adage “the more generic the product, the more you differentiate by brand” certainly appears to be at work here. This is but one comparison across two localised economic booms but the same pattern could be expected to appear whenever there is an “over stimulation” in a highly crowded marketplace.

What this frenzy of logos does show us is that despite the world of brands being fixated on the “now” it too has a “then” – one that I am sure we will see again some time soon.

Author: Stephen Banham, Lecturer in Typography, RMIT University

The hollow promise of construction-led jobs and growth

From The Conversation.

Any downturn in the construction industry could trigger job losses to a range of sectors that support the building industry, such as planning, project management, real estate and property services. This threat reveals the risk of relying on building and construction to sustain the economy.

Since before the global financial crisis, urban economies across the world have relied increasingly on the construction of housing, especially high rise urban apartments, to maintain economic activity.

Construction has boomed in Australia, especially in Melbourne and Sydney. Migration from overseas and interstate, as well as international student numbers, have so far maintained sufficient demand for city apartments and suburban houses to keep the building boom going.

Nationally the number of jobs in construction has increased from 927,000 in May 2007 to 1,110,400 in May 2017, an increase of 183,400 jobs. Even now, the federal government expects that construction employment will increase by 10.9% in the five years to 2022.

But this view is at odds with new data. A recent report by advisory firm BIS Oxford predicts that new dwellings construction will fall by 31%, from 230,000 to 160,000 dwellings in Australia, in the next three years. This prediction foreshadows a dramatic decline in construction employment.

The other jobs construction creates

Construction activity creates employment across the economy. There are jobs in industries that provide input building materials – such as local quarries and forests, sawmills, concrete products manufacturers, steel makers and glass, plastic and metal products manufacturers. There are also jobs created for people working in import firms bringing in materials that might not be made locally, as well as for people who work to store materials and transport them from ports and factories to building sites. Construction generates jobs for people involved in the design and planning of buildings, also those involved in the financing and contracting of construction projects.

Once the buildings exist, construction creates more jobs in marketing the properties, building inspections, buyers agents, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and the like. After the sale, more jobs are sustained in interior designer, selling furnishings and fittings and appliances, and providing internet connections and utilities.

The wages earned and taxes paid by these workers then create jobs in other services industries. This includes everything from dentists and personal trainers to bank tellers and public servants. New populations create new demand for supermarkets and schools and hospitals that employ more people.

The secondary circuit of capital

Following the ideas of French urban theorist Henri Lefebvre, geographer David Harvey famously explained a process called the “second circuit of capital” where building replaces manufacturing as the driver of growth. This secondary circuit soaks up the excess capital sloshing around the world that can’t be invested profitably in the primary circuit of (manufacturing) production. Buildings are built for the purpose of generating profits for developers and investors.

In places like Melbourne, the secondary circuit has created so many jobs in construction and related industries, that these have become the key drivers of growth. All these jobs are at risk when construction activity stalls.

David Harvey’s crucial insight was that once economies rely on construction to drive employment, then the entire economy becomes like a giant Ponzi scheme. The only way that employment in a host city can be maintained is to keep building more buildings.

Harvey argues the principle purpose of building is to generate profit, which means that the building will stop if there are insufficient numbers of buyers, or insufficient buyers willing to pay a price that will generate profit.

If the developers can elect to build elsewhere, in places where returns are higher, the local construction-led system can collapse like a house of cards. The resulting crisis would not be confined to the construction sector but would resonate through all the activities contributing to building or benefiting from the taxes and charges generated by building.

That pretty much means everybody. Once the cards fall over, not only do employment opportunities decline, but so do property values, as prices adjust to the new reality.

Some economists recommend creating new infrastructure projects to provide work, to keep the construction sector and material suppliers in business. But they rarely consider the second order effects as the downturn in construction filters through the economy. Most economists would argue that dealing with these secondary effects is best left to market forces.

This means that as the downturn filters through the economy, jobs will be lost quietly across a range of sectors. The sectors most obviously vulnerable in the event of a downturn in residential building activity will be those that rely on discretionary building-related spending – such as furniture and effects retailing, wholesaling and manufacturing. The impacts on affected households will be no less devastating than for direct building jobs.

Author: Sally Weller, Visiting Fellow, Australian Catholic University

Banking with a chatbot: a battle between convenience and security

From The Conversation.

Soon, you will be able to check your bank balance or transfer money through Facebook Messenger and Twitter as banks experiment with chatbots. Companies like Ikea have used customer service chatbots for close to a decade. But their use in financial services represents a new tension – do we want convenience or a feeling of security from our banks?

Research shows that when it comes to online banking, customers are prepared to trade security for convenience. But when customers think there is a threat to their security, this feeling reverses.

Researchers at QUT recently found that a sense of insecurity is one of the reasons consumers do not already interact with financial institutions on social media. And the feeling of insecurity actually increased between 2010 and 2014, as social media became more popular.

This means banks will likely have to design their chatbots to give a sense of security, just like they do with bank branches.

The trade-off between the convenience and security of a service comes down to trust. Trust in the service provider to protect our personal details (“soft trust”) and trust in the platform and infrastructure you use to access the service (“hard trust”). Both types of trust are important to ensure a sense of balance.

For instance, it’s of little use having an impregnable vault if consumers don’t trust the person with the key. Likewise, trusting a staff member is of little value if consumers can see there are safety flaws in the system. Consumers need to know that their trust (both hard and soft) is well placed before they can enjoy the added convenience of emerging technologies.

Designing a sense of security

Banks previously used physical design to create a sense of security and trust. This is called signalling and involved the use of marble floors, metal bars, and imposing vaults in bank branches to reassure us that our money is safe.

As our banking shifted into apps and websites, we faced the same problem as chatbots currently do – the internet was undoubtedly more convenient but at the expense of a feeling of safety. This was also solved with design.

Websites and apps were designed to send similar signals as that of the physical bank branches. For instance, by using security symbols (such as the green padlock next to the URL of this website), logging customers out if they’re inactive for too long, and moving keyboards for entering online banking passwords.

Research has found consumers feel more secure when a system generates a unique password for each login, than they do when they are allowed a permanent password. Even seeing the initials of an employee in a Tweet can humanise the interaction and instil trust.

All of these design aspects evolved to signal trust and security. But chatbots do not have access to these same design capabilities – you can’t do something as obvious as having a big vault or green padlock.

So what does all this mean for chatbots?

Research from Accenture indicates Australians are ready for artificial intelligence in the financial sector – 60% are open to entirely computer-generated banking advice.

And a World Retail Banking Report found that while 51% of consumers still prefer face-to-face interaction for more complex products and services, they also demand greater levels of digitised customisation and personalisation from financial institutions.

All of this means chatbots could work for banks. On the back end, chatbots can be secured just like websites and apps – using two-factor authentication and encryption etc.

It’s important to promote this feeling in users too. A big part of it will be “humanising” the interaction. For instance, chatbots can be programmed to seem more human – achieving the same thing as staff members’ initials on social media. They can be given names, personalities, and even emotions.

But this will just be the start. As artificial intelligence and chatbots become a part of daily life, the trust signals will need to be built, one digital brick at a time.

Authors: Kate Letheren, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology; Paula Dootson, Research Fellow, PwC Chair in Digital Economy, Queensland University of Technolog

Why bankers so often fail to comply with policies and regulations

From The Conversation.

Allegations that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has been complicit in money laundering is just the latest example of issues with regulatory compliance and risk management in the financial sector.

Our research shows that some of the problem is due to the incentives paid to financial professionals to boost profits. But the personal attitudes of individual staff members also matter, as does tenure (how long individuals have been in the industry).

Even though risk management has become a priority in the financial industry since the global financial crisis, compliance is hard to monitor and so staff are tempted to disobey policies.

Risk management

Recent years have seen regular scandals in the financial industry, notably the Libor interest rate rigging, CommInsure and the more than a million fraudulent accounts created by 5,000 Wells Fargo employees.

Good risk management is designed to ensure risks are within the organisation’s appetite, which should reduce scandals. Senior leaders set the risk appetite and the policy framework – they design the rules that staff should follow.

Finance professionals are expected to comply with all kinds of policies, from limits on the amount/kinds of loans they can make, to policies to reduce the risk of cyber-attack, not to mention reporting of suspicious transactions.

But these policies can mean that potentially profitable deals aren’t pursued, or that time is “wasted” that could be devoted to generating profits.

Our experiment

Our experiment sought to find out more about how incentive schemes and culture affect compliance with risk management policies. With help from industry body FINSIA, we invited 306 financial professionals into a lab and put them through a simulation that mimics investment decisions – buying securities, granting loans, underwriting insurance etc.

The participants had to do some simple analysis (with a calculator) and then decide whether to invest. Over an hour they could complete up to 60 transactions and were given a risk policy/limit to follow. We observed how often participants violated the rules during the session, focusing on those transactions that were outside of policy.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of five “treatments” representing a range of workplace environments that varied how the employees were paid and the behaviour of managers/peers: variable payment and profit-focused, variable payment and no-focus, variable payment and risk-focused, fixed payment and profit-focused, fixed payment and no-focus.

In the risk-focused treatments, participants were told that managers and co-workers prioritise risk management. Participants with variable payments received cash based on the amount of profits they could generate during the session (less penalties for non-compliance). The rest received a fixed payment.

In the profit-focused treatments, we gave participants information showing that managers and co-workers prioritise profits:

“Your manager rarely mentions the risk policy but talks often about the need to meet budget. He is always giving you motivational messages to encourage you to boost profits. You notice that colleagues who breach policy are excused if they are top performers. The risk policies are often criticised by staff because they can interfere with meeting profit targets; risk managers have low status compared with people who have great profit figures.”

The following chart shows the compliance rates in each treatment – the proportion of “bad” transactions where the rules were followed.

We found that when people had variable payments that are linked to profits, their compliance with risk management was significantly reduced. When managers and co-workers were also profit-focused, compliance reduced even further. Interestingly, the variable payments did not produce significant increases in productivity in our experiment. Participants worked about the same amount as those on fixed payments.

On the other hand, when participants were paid a fixed amount regardless of profit, compliance with risk management policies was higher. Although still not perfect. Surprisingly, some people broke the rules even when there was no financial benefit for them to do so. This could be human error or just for the enjoyment of rule-breaking.

But compliance with risk management depends not only on incentives, but also on individual factors. For example, we observed different compliance behaviour across individuals depending on their personal attitudes towards risk management and compliance.

We also found that those with longer tenure in the financial industry were more likely to act in compliance with risk policy. Perhaps such people understand why good risk management matters having lived through a few scandals.

What to do about it?

These findings can be used to guide human resource policies. For example, financial institutions could screen potential employees for their attitudes to risk management. And they could choose to promote or reward staff with favourable attitudes.

But there are other important implications for the industry. Since incentive structures that are profit-based have an adverse impact on risk compliance and do little for productivity, such remuneration programs should be reconsidered. Perhaps it’s time to switch to fixed payments across the industry.

Our research shows that it is difficult to have high rates of risk compliance in the presence of profit-based payments. Staff are likely to believe that profit-based payments signal the true priorities of the organisation and they modify their behaviour accordingly.

But in the end, non-compliance with regulation and policies occurs even in the best environments. Scandals caused by non-compliance are inevitable, although financial institutions can reduce the rate of non-compliance through improved practices.

Authors: Elizabeth Sheedy, Associate Professor – Financial Risk Management, Macquarie University; Le (Lyla) Zhang, Lecturer in Economics, Macquarie Graduate School of Management