Financial Services News

The Federal Government has introduced new rules for the Consumer Data Right (CDR) scheme, promising to spur consumer uptake and remove barriers to data sharing between banks, fintechs and other FSIs. The changes, flagged by the Government in August, are...

The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) has announced the acquisition of payments fintech BlinkPay, with the promise of expanding the NAB-owned bank’s open data capabilities as the country prepares for the roll out of its Consumer Data Right scheme. BNZ...

Westpac and the Australian Banking Association (ABA) have announced the release of an industry-first Safety by Design toolkit designed to support banks in mitigating financial abuse. The toolkit, which has been made available to sector peers, provides guidance for banks...

Australian Unity will redouble its commitment to its wealth, insurance and health services arms, confirming an agreement to transfer its $1.6 billion banking business to mutual banking group Bank Australia. The transfer will include the entirety of Australian Unity’s 25,000-member...

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is recruiting for new members of its cross-border payments interoperability and extension (PIE) taskforce, intending to broaden its geographic and industry representation. The invitation is extended to private sector businesses that offer cross-border payment...

Just two weeks after securing its partnership with Adelaide University’s Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), CommBank and the AIML built a potentially transformative “deep learning” capability expected to halve the speed for critical data processing functions within the bank....

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has sent a clear message to financial services businesses and licensees that they should not allow their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) to get ahead of their governance structures. ASIC has issued the...

Westpac is scaling its AI Accelerator, the banking group’s dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) innovation incubator and high-speed development hub, to deliver a continuous stream of ready-to-deploy AI and generative AI (GenAI) technologies for real-world use cases. Presenting at the Future...

The FS-ISAC, the global financial services industry’s cyber intelligence collective, has released first-of-its-kind guidance for senior executives and board members to help understand and gauge the threat of deepfake technologies. The Deepfake Taxonomy, part of the FS-ISAC’s Deepfakes in the...

Beyond Bank has revamped its loan origination infrastructure, with the successful deployment of Boomi’s all-in-one data and systems integration platform, Boomi Enterprise Platform (BEP), slashing loans processing times for the mutual. The data consolidation, or “centralisation”, and digitisation program effectively...

AMP last week “soft launched” its digital-only SME specialist bank for internal testing, AMP Bank managing director Sean O’Malley has confirmed, just a few months ahead of its public launch early next year. The new bank, first announced in late...

Banking-as-a-Service platform developer Temenos has launched a new ready-to-deploy cross-border payments function developed for by payments services providers (PSPs). The Temenos Cross Border Payments Enterprise Service is pre-configured with connections to multiple low-cost remittance networks, supporting cross-border transactions through real-time...

Financial services regulator ASIC is pursuing civil action against QBE Insurance Australia alleging the firm misled customers about the value of discounts offered on a number of its general insurance products. ASIC alleges that between July 2017 and September 2022,...

Red Energy has become the first major energy retailer to embed the New Payments Platform’s (NPP’s) next-gen direct debit capability, PayTo. PayTo is now live for one-off bill payments and refunds for customers of the energy retailer, which number more...

Medibank has confirmed a three-year strategic partnership with US health technology developer League to embed its technology within the health insurer’s customer service platforms. League’s “data and AI-driven” healthcare navigation platform-as-a-service offering – touted as a “digital front door” to...