Financial Schools Reviews

Gail Kelly, chief executive of Australian banking major Westpac, has appointed a veteran of the lender Jane Kittel, as the new chief of its South Australian unit Bank SA.

Ms. Kittel has worked at Westpac for 15 years, and served most recently as the general manager of Westpac’s Pacific banking operations. Kittel will be taking over the role at Bank SA from Rob Chapman, who himself was elevated to the position of chief executive of another Westpac unit St. George.

Mrs. Kelly lauded Ms. K

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CardHub.com released a late payment study today that revealed a flaw in the way American Express communicates late payment status. We found that American Express is communicating to its customers that they are 25 days more past due than they really are.

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() - While activity in the service sector expanded for the eighth consecutive month in August, a report released by the Institute for Supply Management on Friday showed that the pace of growth in the sector slowed by much more than economists had been anticipating.

The report showed that the ISM’s non-manufacturing index fell to 51.5 in August from 54.3 in July, although a reading above 50 indicates continued growth in the service sector. Economists had expected the index to show a more modest decrease to a reading of 53.0.

With the bigger than expected decrease, the non-manufacturing index fell to its lowest level since coming in at 50.5 in January.

“According to the NMI, nine non-manufacturing industries reported growth in August,” said Anthony Nieves, chair of the ISM Non-Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.

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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.

The study found however that those rates were aggressively cut back within four to six months, bringing them in line or just higher than benchmark interest rates.

Three of the majors, the CBA, NAB and Westpac, offer 6 per cent, while ANZ lags the field at 5.25 per cent. T

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The demand for credit coming from Australian small businesses declined sharply during June, with asset finance demand plunging 21 per cent.

Market research firm Veda Advantage, which publishes the commercial credit index, the result of which show that demand by SME’s during the June quarter fell by 5.6 per cent compared to the same time period during the previous year, and also fell by another 2.1 per cent in July.

Nearly 90 per cent of all Australian businesses are SME’s with annual turnovers of less than $1 million. acc

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