Compare Australia's Credit Card, Banking, Loans & Finance Deals

Money AU offers easy to use comparison charts of Australia's latest finance offers. We also offer daily finance news and comment on how this impacts on the choices available to consumers.

Latest Finance News from Money AU

• Australian Banks Continue To Battle For Deposits By Offering High Introductory Rates
  

  Australia’s largest banks are using high introductory online savings rates to attract retail deposits and expand their deposit bases. Despite the high introductory rates, the lenders later aggressively cut back their deposit rates in order to preserve their profit margins.

  The investment bank Macquarie conducted an analysis of the online savings market which found that the big four Australian lenders, as well as some international rivals were offering introductory rates that were as much as 200 basis points higher than the 4.5 per cent official cash rate.

• QBE Denies Chief Executive To Step Down
  

  Australian insurance major QBE has moved to end speculation that its chief executive is poised to step down. QBE chief Frank O’Halloran has run the company for the last twelve years, and the insurer says that he would continue in that role “for the foreseeable future”.

  Rumours of Mr. O’Halloran’s departure ricocheted around the insurance industry this week, when speculation began to emerge that Mr. O’Halloran would hand over the reigns of the company to Peter Harmer, a senior executive at insurance broker AON.

• Research Firm Says ANZ Offers Best Value For Small Business
  

  Australian banking major ANZ, has been named by a financial research firm as the lender which provided the best value banking service for small business. Despite the accolade, ANZ has not managed to convince all the decision makers in the business sector, and still lags behind rivals.

  Canstar in issuing the award said certain product features that matter a great deal to small business provided by ANZ including credit facilities and loans.
  But this has yet to translate into higher customer satisfaction levels with the bank.

• JP Morgan To Cease Proprietary Trading
  

  Global banking giant JP Morgan has apparently decided to close down its proprietary trading operations, sources from within the bank say. According to an unnamed source quoted by Dow Jones, JP Morgan has issued notice to approximately 20 proprietary traders that trade commodities.

  JP Morgan has never had a huge focus on proprietary trading, and it’s prop trading desks have tended to be small. Nevertheless those desks have been affected by regulatory reform and in particular the Volcker Rule, which forbids banks from proprietary trading, proprietary investments in hedge funds and private equity.

• Australians Believe Not Enough Competition In Banking
  

  A survey undertaken by Australian wealth manager AMP suggests that nearly 78 per cent of all Australians believe that acquisitions by banks should be restricted.It is no coincidence that the survey results were released on the eve of the ruling by the competition regulator on National Australia Bank’s proposed acquisition of Axa Asia Pacific Holdings.

  According to the AMP survey, an overwhelming majority of 71 per cent of people polled say they believe that there needs to be increased competition within the Australian financial services sector.