By Jill Fraser for Lending Central

Melbourne-based broker Daniel Thorpe, Managing Director Thorpe Financial Services Pty Ltd says; “in the coming New World it will only require a minor shift in lenders’ policies to do away with aggregators”.

Thorpe contacted Lending Central and offered to put forward the broker’s perspective regarding the changing market.

He maintains that the broker perspective is constantly being trivialised as “whinging”. His argument is that the opposite is true - brokers are adapting to change but not so lenders and aggregators to anywhere near the same extent.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that aggregators - the middlemen - are the one part of the equation that could disappear,” he says.

“The banks have established individual criteria. Their rules vary but essentially they all state that unless brokers submit a specified number of loans a quarter they’ll lose their accreditation.
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Online real estate company REA Group Ltd is preparing to face its biggest competitor yet, Google, but remains confident it can build revenue after withdrawing from the UK and New Zealand.

Chief executive Greg Ellis played down Google as a threat to REA’s 900,000 listings and five million unique browsers on its realestate.com.au website, saying competition was always good.
Google announced this week it would list properties on its Google Maps application.

“It’s a fairly rudimentary service, ” Mr Ellis said of the Google initiative.

” … Google’s a very good company, it is competition, but we welcome competition because it makes us stay sharper and more focused for our customers and consumers,” Mr Ellis said.

“Our position in the marketplace is very strong, we are the market leader in online real estate.
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A Perth-based financial services provider has been banned from the industry for eight years by the corporate watchdog due to his involvement with collapsed fuel additive firm Firepower.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has banned Quentin Ward, of Nedlands, from providing financial services until 2017, ASIC said in a statement on Wednesday.

The ban follows ongoing civil proceedings brought by ASIC against Mr Ward and a company that he was the sole director of, Axis International Management Pty Ltd.
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The Seven Network has been ordered to pay $240,000 in defamation damages to a mortgage broker falsely portrayed as having fleeced $1 million from a dementia patient.

In awarding the damages to Peter Mahommed on Thursday, Justice David Kirby said the elderly woman had not suffered from dementia and was a “practised fraudster”.

Mr Mahommed, 53, sued Channel Seven in the NSW Supreme Court over a June 2004 Today Tonight program and two earlier promotional broadcasts screened throughout most of Australia.

He had worked in the Newcastle area but since the show could not continue in the job. He moved house, grew a beard and wore a baseball cap so people would not recognise him.
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The federal government has warned that the economy still faces a rough ride, even though another rise in the jobless rate was more moderate than experts had predicted.

The unemployment rate struck a six-year high of 5.8 per cent in June data released on Thursday, rising one notch from the 5.7 per cent posted in May.

This was slightly less than the 5.9 per cent predicted by economists.

Still, there was a solid 21,400 drop in the total number of people employed in the month.

The total number of jobs lost in May was also revised to 8,500, up from an originally reported 1,700.
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ANZ Banking Group Ltd is to shed as many as 248 full-time equivalent positions in a major restructure of its mortgage lending businesses in each state and the Northern Territory.

The positions affected are in addition to the 500 job cuts announced by the bank earlier this year in other parts of the group.

The latest round of job cuts involve mainly back-room operations in ANZ mortgage facilitation centres in Sydney, Brisbane, South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania.

The back-room operations will be centralised to Melbourne.
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National property valuation group, Opteon, today announced a further extension of its services and geographic coverage in Western Australia and New South Wales.

Effective immediately established regional valuation businesses, Kimberley Property Services and Albany Valuations from WA and Langshaw Valuations in NSW will join and co-brand with the national group, which last year completed 670,000 valuations for banks, all levels of government and corporate Australia.
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Wealth Today has become the name brokers and financial professionals are talking about after successfully launching in Victoria late last month. With head offices in Perth and a senior director based in Queensland, Wealth Today is a part of the Today Group of Companies, recently named in the BRW Fast Starters list of 2009 and previously in 2008.

Last month saw the company launch its first Academy for brokers in Melbourne. The unique, custom designed Academy qualifies brokers to give financial advice so that they can help their valuable clients attain a mortgage and then swiftly work with them on strategies to pay it off sooner.

With risk management and insurance included in their service offering, the Wealth Today Adviser is a one-stop-shop for the significant mums and dads market looking to get a grip on their financial practises in these challenging economic times.
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Mortgage Choice is pleased to see the Reserve Bank of Australia maintain the official cash rate at 3% for a third month in a row, giving borrowers more time to prepare their pockets for eventual rate rises.

A number of lenders have already begun raising mortgage interest rates in recent weeks, sparking concern from borrowers that the much lower repayment levels experienced in the past several months may be short lived.

Mortgage Choice senior corporate affairs manager, Kristy Sheppard said that since increasing fixed rates began to receive attention last month there has been a marked rise in the number of proactive Australians enquiring about their loan options.

“People are realising that the time of historically low interest rates is probably coming to a close. Whether or not this is the case, we are pleased to see borrowers and potential property buyers using the relative respite in rate movements to thoroughly research their loan options,” she said.
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Falling inflation could lead to another official interest rate cut even though the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), as expected, decided to stay on the rates fence for another month.The RBA’s board held its monthly (except for January) monetary policy meeting on Tuesday.

At the end of the meeting the RBA governor Glenn Stevens issued a statement confirming the interbank overnight cash rate, the benchmark for short-term rates in Australia, would stay at 3.00 per cent.

The cash rate has been at that 49-year low since April where it steadied after an eight-month series of cuts from a 12-year high of 7.25 per cent.

The reasons given for the decision were a virtual repeat of the statement made a month earlier.

There are signs the global economy is steadying but risks still abound, while the Australian economy is showing signs of life in the housing sector though business investment is being pared back.
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Smartline has formally merged with Western Australian broking group Mortgage Force, making the new group one of Australia’s largest franchised broking companies.

The company now has more than 200 franchise owners throughout Australia, has assisted over 100,000 clients and has a loan portfolio exceeding $10 billion.

Smartline Managing Director, Chris Acret, said while the merger had required considerable management time and effort, the process had been relatively smooth, with more than 60 Mortgage Force brokers operating within the Smartline franchise system from 1 July.

The Mortgage Force brand has been retained in WA, with the Smartline brand adopted across the rest of the country.
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Today’s guest post comes from Lex Graber from Direct Investor and talks about the simplification of the banking system.

Like the Henry report and other government initiatives many people in the Finance Industry believe it’s time to revisit the entire Banking and Loan Origination System given the large commentary on this subject lately. Part of the reason for the review has been the GFC and the poor credit management it has alerted us too. We thought it was time to take a look at why it has become so complex and how we can move to rebuild and reform the industry by examining some of these issues.

Most people are familiar with the KISS principle, that is, we should seek to simplify where possible. If we take a Bank/Lender product as an example, there was a time not so very long ago when Bank service was better and people formed relationships with their Banker. This meant Bank customers were reluctant to move and seek a competitors offerings.

With the arrival of the Internet and several economic downturns later Bank customers became more price conscious and shopped around. Some Banks gained ground as their products were clearly cheaper while others lost ground. Service was discounted by their customers in order to continue to put food on the table whilst Banks looked to trim their service and increase their margins.
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photo credit: another_finnRegional and foreign banks have a chance to take on the big four banks as a price war over term deposits drives a convergence of savings and transaction accounts, a research company says. More funds have shifted into high interest paying accounts combining savings and transaction functions as consumers seek versatility and greater returns for their cash, Datamonitor’s annual survey of 2,300 bank customers says.

Datamonitor senior analyst Petter Ingemarsson says the change could establish a new product category that may boost the market positions of foreign and regional banks.

“In the 1990s with mortgages there was the opportunity for new entrants to enter the market, and we saw it with high interest savings accounts,” Mr Ingemarsson said.

“What we’re seeing now is that the next focal point is in the area of retail deposits and combined accounts.”
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A mortgage broker allegedly defrauded up to $5 million and threatened clients who planned to inform police, a Sydney court has been told. Samer Hraiki appeared in Central Local Court on Tuesday charged with deceptive conduct as well as traffic-related matters.

Hraiki’s lawyer William Barber said his client, a finance broker of many years, encountered financial difficulties while developing a property in Kings Cross, which would have realised tens of millions of dollars in profit.

Mr Barber told the court Hraiki did what he could to get himself out of debt.
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The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has maintained official interest rates at a 49-year low amid signs that the global economy is stabilising and that domestic inflation will continue to abate.But the central bank left open the door to further rate cuts, if they are needed.

“The board’s current view is that the outlook for inflation allows some scope for further easing of monetary policy, if needed,” governor Glenn Stevens said in a statement accompanying the decision.

“In assessing how it might use that scope, the board will continue to monitor how economic and financial conditions unfold and how they impinge on prospects for a sustainable recovery in economic activity.”

The RBA decided to leave the cash rate unchanged at three per cent after its board meeting on Tuesday, as had been widely expected.
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