More Punishment?

In eight days,  the Reserve Bank board will weigh the consequences of increasing the cash rate again. For the most part the denizens of Money Road  expect a hike from 3.1% to 3.35%, but a chorus of influential commentators is arguing  that enough is enough.  Writing in The New Daily, Michael Pascoe suggests the RBA do nothing or risk a recession.  The Guardian’s, Greg Jericho, takes a similar line arguing that the RBA should allow time for the impact of the  earlier rate rises to flow through. “Inflation is falling, it’s just not yet visible in official figures”. Alan Kohler asks how long it will be before we stop using  human misery to control inflation. He says that the Reserve Bank is punishing Australian borrowers for events out of their control and spreading misery throughout the community by continually hiking interest rates. 

 Cancel Culture

After a lengthy period of discussion, the Australian Banking Association says it members  will continue to arbitrarily cancel the accounts of sole traders and small businesses they don’t like. Neither  do they see a reason banks should  provide customers with an explanation. It’s called debanking and is generally used to deny services to the likes of cryptocurrency traders, brothels, sex shops, tattoo parlours, firearms dealers, mining companies and the farming sector.  Even family members unrelated to a business have been debanked, according to this report in Smart Company.

 Time Thief

It’s a little off topic, but a talking point too good to ignore.  News Ltd reports the case of  a Melbourne employer who docked an employees wages for spending too much time on his mobile phone – even watching a movie. The employer calculated the staffer wasted five hours of  a nine hour shift.  Naturally, the worker complained loudly to his friends on social media who piled into the boss. To no avail. The employer stood firm and produced further evidence of the worker’s torpid state while supposedly at work.

 Fighting Fraud

The era of open banking is well and truly upon us.  Loan aggregator, Finsure,  is making open banking data available to the 2,500 brokers working under its umbrella. What is open banking? In this instance,  mortgage  brokers, with a borrower’s consent, would get access to their  historical and current banking records and personal information to help assess a loan application.  Lenders say it will help them avoid fraud and speed up the loan process by providing  immediate insight into a borrower’s long-term financial behaviour. 

Sleepless Nights

Inflation, staff  shortages and weak supply chains are the three issues  keeping Australia’s CEO’s awake at night, according to a  survey of 280 business leaders conducted by the Australian Industry Group.   

• 90%  of businesses expect to be affected by staffing shortages in 2023 with the majority focusing on staff retention and reskilling rather than recruitment in the year ahead.
• 88% will  invest in reducing vulnerabilities and offering different products to overcome continuing supply chain disruption.
• 49% expect business conditions to improve.
• 21% expect conditions to remain as they were in 2022. The rest are not so confident..

Have a great week.   If you or your clients need funds for a business we could help. We are specialists in invoice finance, trade finance and supply chain finance. You can contact  me on 0411 535 096. 

Paul Ransley