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    Big four

    Yesterday

    ANZ’s head of institutional banking, Mark Whelan, with the bank’s chief executive, Shayne Elliott, last year.

    ANZ board ‘acutely focused’ on trading scandal

    In a note to staff, the bank’s executives said directors and senior management met on Tuesday to review probes into workplace conduct and market manipulation.

    • Updated
    • Jonathan Shapiro and Lucas Baird

    This Month

    ANZ’s headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands. The company’s senior managers are trying to contain a growing scandal at its markets division.

    ANZ suspends traders for alleged misconduct amid markets probe

    The bank’s executives are battling to contain a growing scandal about its trading team, with the regulator investigating whether bond trades were manipulated.

    • Jonathan Shapiro
    The CBA share price has soared some 30 per cent in the last 12 months, widening the gap between the country’s largest bank and its rivals.

    The only analyst still backing CBA says the huge price is worth it

    Shares in the country’s largest bank have rallied 30 per cent in 12 months, with fund managers and every broker – except CLSA – saying it is too expensive.

    • Lucas Baird
    ASIC made five recommendations to improve bank conduct.

    Banks caught repeating royal commissioner-era fee charging

    ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank have agreed to move 200,000 customers into lower-fee accounts.

    • Ronald Mizen
    What did ANZ executives know – and when – is the key question? The pay packets and bonuses were large enough and the warnings frequent enough to suggest they had to have known something.

    The ANZ scandal is a bombshell in two acts

    The issues engulfing the bank’s trading team are not about complicated bond trades. It’s about an alleged double act of deceit and manipulation of the taxpayer.

    • Jonathan Shapiro
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    Jim Chalmers in Parliament House. ANZ’s alleged trading would have increased the government’s cost of borrowing.

    ANZ’s alleged bond trade manipulation is ‘disturbing’

    MST Marquee veteran analyst Brian Johnson says the growing scandal in the bank’s markets division “could be yet a significant issue” for investors.

    • Jonathan Shapiro
    Commonwealth Bank’s level of retail ownership is at record lows, according to Jarden.

    Retail ownership of big banks crashes to lowest level on record

    Hot demand from offshore and local institutional investors has been driving up the share price of the country’s big lenders, a Jarden analysis shows.

    • Joanne Tran
    Revolut has added a BNPL feature to its so-called ‘financial super app’.

    Revolut’s ambition adds to major banks’ headache

    “If we do a good job, we can attract more customers from traditional banks,” says the global CFO of Revolut, which has more than 600,000 users in Australia.

    • James Eyers
    Consumer data right is meant to make switching accounts and finding cheaper products easier.

    Fintechs accuse banks of sabotage on ‘open banking’

    The start-ups attacked the banks for trying to sabotage the consumer data right, arguing figures on low usage misrepresent growing interest in account switching.

    • James Eyers
    Consumer data right is meant to make switching accounts and finding cheaper products easier.

    Senate to vote next month on extending data right for bank switching

    Treasurer Jim Chalmers is working through banks’ concerns about the consumer data right, as the Senate forced a vote on a bill to extend it by mid-August.

    • James Eyers and John Kehoe
    Consumer data right was meant to make switching accounts and finding cheaper products easier. Instead, the banks say, it has cost more than $1.5 billion and had little uptake.

    Banks spent $1.5b on account switching. No one is using it

    The consumer data right, which has already cost banks $1.5 billion, is too complicated and doesn’t have a clear use four years after launch, major lenders say.

    • James Eyers
    Consumer data right was meant to make it easier for bank customers to switch if they found cheaper products – and for competitors to offer better services with access to more data.

    They built it – but nobody came. Consumer data right needs help

    Privately, bank bosses remain highly agitated about being more open about the valuable data they hold, the sharing of which could make competition more intense.

    • James Eyers
    It’s no surprise that a non-market-facing government bureaucracy has failed to turbo-charge competition.

    Open banking offers a salutary tale

    The lesson is that governments trying to regulate their way to a greater bank competition can have anti-competitive effects.

    • The AFR View
    ANZ was found to have charged fees to deceased estates.

    ANZ lashed for charging fees to dead people

    The Banking Code Compliance Committee said deficiencies in the bank’s compliance frameworks for dealing with deceased estates were “deeply concerning”.

    • James Eyers
    National Australia Bank has been growing mortgages the slowest of the majors, with annualised growth of just 0.5 per cent.

    Rising interest rates are bad news for bank stocks

    Another cash rate increase would do more damage to arrears than it would help net interest margins, according to Morgan Stanley.

    • James Eyers
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    June

    The sneaky-good trade this financial year was staring every investor in the face. Few fund managers cashed in.

    This year’s winners were hiding in plain sight

    Australia’s fund managers were chasing their tails from November when the market started running. Plenty never caught up, and one sector proved most costly.

    • Anthony Macdonald
    The market’s focus will turn to deal integration, but Shayne Elliott says the task is one of customer migration.

    ANZ boss says Suncorp ‘migration’ can avoid Westpac’s St George pain

    Shayne Elliott insists he’s learnt from Westpac’s failure to integrate St George, while Suncorp’s Steve Johnston says he can now focus fully on insurance.

    • James Eyers, Liam Walsh and Tom Richardson
    ANZ will finally be able to take over Suncorp Bank following Treasurer approval for the $4.9b deal.

    Chalmers approves ANZ’s $4.9b Suncorp deal

    The decision paves the way for the biggest merger in banking since the Commonwealth Bank took out ailing Bankwest during the global financial crisis in 2008.

    • Updated
    • James Eyers
    ANZ, along with other major banks, are warning that mortgage lending is increasingly restricted to the very wealthy.

    Lending rules ‘locking out’ house buyers: ANZ CEO

    The banks have become increasingly strident in their criticism of lending rules, warning it is preventing access to home loans except for the wealthy.

    • James Eyers
    ASIC chairman Joe Longo. “While there’s much that’s good in the code, we need to be alive to apathy, complacency or in the worst circumstances, backsliding.”

    ASIC warns banks not to become complacent with new code

    ASIC has approved a new Banking Code of Practice, but chairman Joe Longo says lenders must be alive to the dangers of “apathy, complacency and backsliding”. 

    • James Eyers

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