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NEWS


Australian banks power up with new real-time payments system


T


hree major banks in Australia have rolled out the country’s New Payments Platform (NPP), a billion-dollar instant payments system in the works since 2012.


Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and National Australia Bank are the first to take on the platform, which promises users that transfers can be made in less than a minute, as opposed to the three days older systems needed.


ANZ Bank, the odd one out, has said that it will not be launching with the system right away, after “rigorous testing” performed to make sure that customers were given the “best possible” and “safest” experience.


Bank State Branch numbers and account numbers will still be in use, but customers and businesses can now create “PayID” identifiers. PayID accepts email addresses or mobile numbers as identification, both to send and receive payments.


The UK’s Faster Payments scheme is a reliable case study for the potential effectiveness of NPP. It took Faster Payments two years to surpass 500 million transactions, but after seven years it had processed five billion.


Faster Payments, despite its increasing popularity, is not the main payment method. The Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS), remains the most widely used.


NAB to cut 6,000 mid-managers N T


ational Australia Bank (NAB) is prepared to cut 6,000 jobs from its middle management, implementing a scheme of cost reductions announced by its chief executive in


November 2017.


The bank plans to make 1,000 people redundant every six months over a three-year period. Australian Financial Review confirmed rumours by getting hold of an internal communication by NAB people officer Lorraine Murphy.


“We said we would provide the utmost care and respect for all of our people,” Murphy said in the note. “This remains our priority.”


Staff made redundant by the bank are being given access to a specialised programme designed to help them find a new job. According to its full-year results released in November, NAB employs 33,422 full-time employees, down 2.5% from the previous period.


Julie Angrisano, Finance Sector Union national secretary, said: “This is 6,000 people who will have to go home and tell their families they no longer have work.”


CBA spending down while profits up


he Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has revealed that it has spent a total of AU$752 million ($591 million) in the first half of 2018, about AU$350 million less than it spent in


H1 2017.


The bank reported its eighth consecutive rise in annual profit last year. The largest lender in Australia by size, CBA reported a 7.6% rise in net profit to AU$9.93 billion. Cash earnings experienced an increase of 4.6%, to AU$9.88 billion.


CBA’s multi-year rollout of SAP for Banking was completed in late 2013, with a final bill of more than AU$1 billion.


The bank has enjoyed years of steady growth, mostly buoyed by its


stranglehold on the Australian mortgage market. CBA sells about one quarter of all home loans in its home country.


According to CBA, about 56% of its total transactions by value are done digitally, while 26% of retail sales are digital. The bank also reported a 25% increase in mobile logins over the last 12 months.


It has not been plain sailing for the Australian lender recently. In December it was hit by civil penalty proceedings from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. CBA had been accused of “serious and systematic non-compliance” with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism regulations. The bank admitted that incongruent datasets had caused the issues.


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