Financial Services

Westfield retail outlet tenants will participate in an eight-week trial using blockchain to revamp bank guarantees issuance and management processes. The real-world pilot follows a successful proof-of-concept involving ANZ Bank, Westpac, IBM, and Scentre Group conducted in 2017.
 

June saw a number of high-profile appointments and departures across the financial services sector, with noteworthy additions to CBA, Westpac, and the Bank of Queensland.
 

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Swiss-based global authority which governs relations between the world’s central banks, has announced it will establish its own Innovation Hub to nurture the development of cross-border financial technologies.
 

The Australian Payments Council (APC) has launched its new strategic agenda, outlining five priority areas to boost consumer confidence in payments infrastructure in the face of persistent systems outages and mounting losses from fraudulent transactions.
 

For a third consecutive year, CommBank has been rated Australia's top mobile banking app, receiving unalloyed praise for both its user experience and functionality despite lacklustre advancements across the big fours' mobile offerings this year.
 

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) will revamp its data management, retention policies, procedures and controls under a court-enforceable undertaking signed in the wake of two privacy incidents which placed nearly 20 million customer records at risk of exposure.
 

Australian banks are failing to utilise their in-house analytics capabilities, effectively relinquishing a “massive profit uplift” that could be gained through their data teams, according to Jonas Christensen, Head of Analytics, ME.
 

Australia’s largest business bank by assets, NAB, has committed $2 billion of debt funding over a half-decade in a bid to position itself as the priority banker for technology-driven businesses.
 

 Revolut, the UK-based fintech offering a number of alternative financial transaction services including cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments, has made its first foray into the Antipodean market with the soft launch of its beta app in Australia last week.
 

SWIFT, the global standards body and network that underpins financial transaction data between 200 countries, is urging the financial services industry to boost automation and remove inefficiencies that hamper global forex/FX trades, a report by the financial telecommunications service reveals.
 

Australia’s financial crime investigation agency, AUSTRAC, has enlisted the services of an external auditor to vet the global ‘buy now, pay later’ payments giant, Afterpay, following concerns the fintech may be in breach of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act 2006.
 

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) wants penalties imposed on Australia’s major banks if they fail to accelerate efforts to implement New Payments Platform (NPP) features, amid concerns the big four's dithering has hindered payments innovation across the financial sector.
 

May saw a number of high-profile appointments and departures across the financial services sector, with noteworthy additions to ANZ, ME and Kiwibank.
 

NAB is seeking the expertise and innovation potential of the global fintech industry, building a new portal to facilitate partnerships between financial technology companies and an alliance of three banking heavyweights.

AMA Group, the ASX-listed smash repair network and the go-to repairer for a number of Australia's top insurers, has teamed with 360globalnet, a digital developer and cloud services provider, to build a centralised digital claims platform that it expects will significantly reduce the time to estimate, approve, and allocate motor vehicle repairs.