Financial Services News

Beforepay has announced it has been granted an Australian Credit Licence (ACL) by financial services regulator ASIC, giving the go-ahead for the ASX-listed fintech to extend its offering beyond its core ‘pay advance’ product. The ACL, issued to Beforepay’s wholly...

Our popular Movers & Shakers – Financial Services series – a wrap-up of the industry’s senior leadership appointments, departures and movements – returns as a weekly! Appointments ◼️ The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has appointed Jamie Crank as its next...

Westpac has announced it will extend its payee verification service, Westpac Verify, for use on its business payables platform, PaymentsPlus. The new capability enables businesses to confirm payee details before payments are initiated, alerting payers to potential bank account number...

Tasmania’s MyState Bank and the Queensland-based Auswide have revealed their plans to merge, with the regional banks already confirming the signing of shares distribution agreement for the proposed new bank. The merged entity would boast a collective customer base of...

Australia’s non-major banks were last year detecting and stopping just 19 per cent of scam transactions by value and recovering just 20 per cent of transactions made to scam accounts, ASIC has revealed in a new report. In its snapshot...

The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) has signed a “NZ-first” API agreement giving users of the Adminis wealth management platform direct access to BNZ’s foreign exchange services. The function, enabled through an Application Programming Interface (API), embeds BNZ’s forex services...

New Zealand’s competition regulator has called on the Government to implement a raft of regulatory and structural changes, including fast-tracking the rollout of Open Banking and providing a competitive capital boost to the state-owned Kiwibank, to drive increased competition in...

An increasing number of corporate businesses appear more than willing to pay out ransomware payments to free their captured data due to the excessive time and inconvenience of restoring high-volume backups, according to Allianz’s global cybersecurity chief. Thomas Hammel, divisional...

Gaps in Millennials’ communication and ‘soft’ skills may be hurting their prospects of breaking into the senior ranks of financial services organisations, results from a recent survey of industry leaders show, though a willingness to upskill may bode well for...

Consumer Data Right (CDR) specialist fintech Adatree has unveiled a new anti-fraud account verification and balance check service built on the data sharing scheme’s rails. The new ‘CDR Insights’ product promises for business users a “secure, real-time method for verifying...

In an unprecedented move, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has initiated Federal Court proceedings against the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) alleging it made misleading statements around its Clearing House Electronic Sub-register System (CHESS) replacement project. ASIC is alleging...

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is delivering IT support services through a newly developed generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) assistance tool, able to respond within seconds to in-house ICT issues encountered by staff. Limited details of the in-house developed IT...

Advice firms’ critical data processing and management systems, including customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in many cases resemble ‘Swiss cheese’ – filled with holes and inefficiencies – that create significant operational challenges for their advisers, argues Padua Solutions co-founder and...

ANZ is set to launch an ‘Australia and New Zealand first’ AI Immersion Centre, designed to increase artificial intelligence (AI) literacy and accelerate generative AI (GenAI) adoption “at scale” within the bank. The Centre, built in cooperation with bigtech Microsoft,...

The Federal Government has laid out its plans to reform the Consumer Data Right (CDR) scheme, including simplification of consent rules and a proposal to reduce onerous compliance and onboarding costs. Treasury has opened consultation on these proposed changes, which...