photo credit: Andres RuedaAustralian remains a cash-based society but the use of plastic credit and debit cards is growing as consumers seek more convenient payment methods and loyalty or reward program benefits, new central bank research shows.

A Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) study of consumer payment behaviour released on Wednesday found cash is still king, accounting for 70 per cent of all transactions.

EFTPOS and MasterCard and Visa debit card payments make up 15 per cent of all transactions, followed by MasterCard and Visa credit card transactions at nine per cent and American Express and Diners Club cards at one per cent.
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Australian superannuation funds will return their biggest losses since the introduction of compulsory super 17 years ago, researchers say.

“2008/09 will go down as the worst financial year for super fund investors since the introduction of compulsory super in July 1992,” SuperRatings managing director Jeff Bresnahan said.

“The global financial crisis has now been the catalyst for two consecutive poor results from our super funds.”

SuperRatings, an independent research group, said it expected medium balanced investment funds to post a loss of 13 per cent for 2009/10 financial year.
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One in five homeowners would consider renting out a spare room to help pay the mortgage in increasingly difficult economic times, a new survey has found.

The poll by real estate agency PRDnationwide also found 14 per cent of respondents already had someone renting a room and another 15 per cent would do so if they had the space.

PRDnationwide research director Jonathan Rivera said the results were not surprising given the present economic climate.

“Having someone contributing $100 a week to rent a spare room could be the difference of struggling with bills or not,” he said.
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A range of new tax relief measures come into play from Wednesday, which will further help business and jobs in the face of the global recession, Treasurer Wayne Swan says.

Income tax cuts, refunds for education expenses and increased child care benefits form part of a new wave of stimulus for the economy, and come on top of the one-off welfare and tax bonuses dished out this year.

“These payments have overwhelmingly benefited low and middle-income Australians and have been very effective in supporting business activity, limiting job losses and keeping Australia from falling into technical recession,” Mr Swan said in a statement.
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ABC Learning founder Eddy Groves has agreed to have his assets frozen, while denying most of his property is actually in a company in his new wife’s name.

His wife, Viryan Collins-Rubie, is the sole director of the discretionary trust company Perfection Too, while the Groves family, including children, are its beneficiaries.

In the Federal Court on Tuesday, John Halley, for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), contended the company is “the alter-ego” of Mr Groves.

And he said the corporate watchdog was concerned its assets were being dissipated, noting recent transfers of two Queensland properties, at Currumbin Valley and Palm Beach.
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Problems with the Commonwealth Bank’s internet banking website are due to a high level of traffic, some of which may be malicious, the bank says.

But customers’ money is safe, it says.

“There have been no security breaches and no customer information, money or accounts have been accessed or compromised,” Commonwealth Bank spokesman Steve Batten said.

“We are currently experiencing exceptionally high volumes of traffic, some of which appears to be malicious,” he told AAP.

The source of the suspect traffic, and its type, had not yet been confirmed, he said.
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Demand for credit remains subdued in an uncertain economic climate with only the housing sector showing any signs of strength, new data shows.

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s monthly credit report released on Tuesday shows total credit demand eased 0.1 per cent in May compared with April, to stand at a paltry 3.9 per cent higher than a year earlier.

Annual growth was over 13 per cent in May last year.

Demand for credit by businesses continued to tank against a backdrop of weak trading conditions and a cut in investment plans.
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The number of new home sales declined for the first time in four months in May as fewer first home buyers entered the market, a survey says.

The number of new home sales fell 5.7 per cent in May, according to new figures released by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) on Tuesday.

New home sales had risen for the first four months of 2009.

“The small pull back in sales in May is likely to reflect a plateauing of first home buyer activity combined with continued weakness in the trade-up and investor markets,” HIA said.
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Rural services company Elders Ltd says it has completed agreements with its lenders to extend short dated debt for three months, allowing time to refinance the facilities.

Elders said in a statement on Tuesday that the debt would be extended from June 30 to September 30.

“The extension has been put in place to provide sufficient time to enable orderly completion of the refinancing of the current financing facilities into a new syndicated facility,” the statement said.

“Elders anticipates that the refinancing will be concluded by 30 September 2009.”
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Potential bottlenecks with home loan applications can be avoided if buyers are assisted through the approval process, according to leading mortgage broker Loan Market.

Loan Market Sunshine Coast broker Lindy Kelly said banks and other home finance providers had been busier due to the rush of people taking up the boosted First Home Buyers Grant.

But she said the increased workload for lenders had not jeopardised residential real estate transactions.

“Loan Market has been working with individual lenders to ensure that there is a process in place for the escalation and fast-tracking of urgent loan applications,” Ms Kelly said.
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National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB) chief executive Cameron Clyne says rising bad debt levels will be feature of most banks’ results over the “next couple” of half years, particularly if unemployment rises.

Mr Clyne said while Australia was experiencing a milder downturn that other countries around the world, its banks had already seen a rise in corporate credit impairments related to leveraged business models over late 2008 and early 2009.

“We are now very much in the same phase of the downturn and we saw that particularly, I think, in most banks’ results, with an up-tick in the March half (year) with bad and doubtful debts,” he told ABC Television.

“We think that’s going to be a feature in the next couple of halves.
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Angry bank customers have found a new place to deposit their anger.

They are hitting the world wide web instead of their bank branch and are venting online about sloppy service and interest rate rises.

A new Nielsen Online study reveals social networking sites such as Twitter are booming with people publicly expressing their displeasure.

The study measured consumer-generated media, or “buzz”, around the big four banks and found online discussion spiked following specific incidents related to banks.
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Cyber criminals purporting to be the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) are using a sophisticated email scam involving personal tax returns to fleece consumers, a computer security company says.

The scam ATO email, which promises a $250 bonus on top of a tax return, links the taxpayer to an online form that asks for personal details including ATM pin, credit card details and tax file number.

Instead of submitting the form online, the website asks for a printed version to be mailed to an address.

Symantec Australia and New Zealand managing director Craig Scroggie said cyber criminals captured the details when the print button was pressed, allowing access to the accounts.
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Savvy small businesses are using high interest-earning online savings accounts to keep spare cash for a rainy day, new research shows.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) that used high interest online deposit accounts pumped $1.9 billion into these accounts in the six months to March, a report from independent consultants the Market Intelligence Strategy Centre (MISC) found.

SMEs that did not use these high interest accounts withdrew $28.4 billion from their “normal vanilla” deposit accounts over the same period.

MISC, which conducts research on behalf of the banks, said about 155,000 small businesses used high interest online savings accounts as part of their day-to-day banking.
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photo credit: Gio JLThe Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has room for at least two further interest rate cuts over the next six months, but will not move unless there are clear signs of rising unemployment and a further deterioration in the global outlook.

Economists say the fate of the labour market will be key to any central bank move, although the size of any more reductions are now expected to be relatively modest.

The RBA has kept the official cash rate unchanged for the past two months, after delivering 125 basis points worth of cuts across February and March.

At its June board meeting, the last before the end of the 2008/09 financial year, the RBA said it “did not see a pressing case for any further action at this meeting”.
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