K62 Finance

Trust in banking and finance industries – including all big four banks – increases significantly over the last 12 months

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Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 12-Nov-25

Roy Morgan measures trust and distrust across 27 industries and over 200 key Australian brands on an ongoing basis. A special deep dive into trust and distrust in the banking and finance industry shows a remarkable recovery in levels of trust and a reduction in distrust for the industry over the last 12 months. The Banking industry itself is now the 14th most trusted industry in Australia, up 10 spots from a year ago, lifted higher by rising trust and decreasing distrust in the big four banks. In addition, the Insurance industry is up five spots and is now the 12th most trusted industry. The Payments, Cards and Loans industry is up three places to 7th and the Superannuation and Wealth Management industry is up three positions to 6th overall. These four industries have improved more than any other sectors over the last 12 months.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED

Majority of mortgage holders who live alone or as single parents experience mortgage stress

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Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 29-Oct-25

Roy Morgan’s Single Source research shows that 52.3% of owner-occupier mortgage holders who live alone or are single parents are ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress, while 36.0% are ‘Extremely at Risk’. Many more women than men are impacted; an estimated 205,000 ‘single female’ mortgage holders were ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress in the 12 months to June 2025 compared with 108,000 ‘single male’ mortgage holders. More single women were also ‘Extremely at Risk’ of mortgage stress (137,000), compared with 74,000 single male mortgage holders. The substantially higher number of single female mortgage holders at risk of mortgage stress is not only due to single women being more likely to be at risk of mortgage stress, but also due to there being more single women than single men among mortgage holders; nearly twice as many mortgage holders are single women (6.8%) as single men (4.1%). While single women are more likely to be at ‘Extreme Risk’ of mortgage stress than ‘single men’, the gap is greatest among those aged under 34, where the income gap between men and women is greater.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED

Risk of mortgage stress drops to lowest since February 2023 after RBA cuts interest rates to 3.6% in August

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Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 22-Oct-25

New research from Roy Morgan shows that 25.9% of mortgage holders (1,361,000) were ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in the three months to September 2025, down 2% points from August. This is the lowest share of mortgage holders ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ since February 2023 when the share first rose above 25% of mortgage holders (where it has stayed ever since). The number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress has increased by 554,000 since May 2022, when the RBA began a cycle of interest rate increases. Meanwhile, the number of Australians considered to be ‘Extremely At Risk’ of mortgage stress is now numbered at 858,000 (16.3% of mortgage holders) which is in line with the long-term average over the last two decades (also 16.3%). These are the latest findings from Roy Morgan’s Single Source Survey, based on in-depth interviews conducted with over 60,000 Australians each year, including over 10,000 owner-occupied mortgage-holders.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED

Risk of mortgage stress remains high despite interest rate cut in mid-August

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Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 1-Oct-25

New research from Roy Morgan shows that 27.9% of mortgage holders were ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in the three months to August 2025, down only 0.5% points from June. The share of mortgage holders ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ has been above 25% since February 2023, despite three interest rate cuts so far this year. The number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress has increased by 616,000 since May 2022, when the RBA began a cycle of interest rate increases. Meanwhile, the number of Australians considered ‘Extremely At Risk’ of mortgage stress is now numbered at 915,000 (17.9% of mortgage holders), which is significantly above the long-term average over the last 10 years of 14.8%. These are the latest findings from Roy Morgan’s Single Source Survey, based on in-depth interviews conducted with over 60,000 Australians each year, including over 10,000 owner-occupied mortgage-holders.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED

Westpac cuts 200 teller jobs for digital

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Original article by David Ross
The Australian – Page: 15 : 24-Sep-25

Westpac is set to retrench 200 of its bank tellers as part of its latest restructuring program. The Finance Sector Union’s national secretary Julia Angrisano says it is "callous and short sighted" for Westpac to get staff to migrate customers to its digital services and then sack them. She adds that the FSU will hold Westpac to account "every step of the way", arguing that workers whose roles are cut must be re-skilled and redeployed, rather than discarded. Angrisano adds that Westpac only agreed to establish a $5m development fund for displaced staff due to pressure from the FSU, and that there has been no clarity as to how this fund will work and whether it will genuinely protect jobs.

CORPORATES
WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION – ASX WBC, FINANCE SECTOR UNION

Investors back Matos to clean up the ANZ mess

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Original article by James Eyers
The Australian Financial Review – Page: 17 : 17-Sep-25

The ANZ Bank’s share price fell by just 0.6 per cent on Tuesday, despite growing scrutiny over the lender in the wake of a recorded $240m financial penalty for misconduct. Montgomery Investment Management’s chairman Roger Montgomery says investors are betting that the strategy of ANZ’s relatively new CEO Nuno Matos will succeed in closing the valuation gap with its peers. Jon Mott from Barrenjoey in turn says Matos has a clear mandate to implement his turnaround strategy.

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LIMITED – ASX ANZ, MONTGOMERY INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT PTY LTD, BARRENJOEY CAPITAL PARTNERS PTY LTD

ASX stocks to fire as Fed kicks off cuts

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Original article by Gus McCubbing
The Australian Financial Review – Page: 27 : 17-Sep-25

Bond traders have fully priced in a 25 basis point interest rate cut at the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting this week. They are expect at least another four rate cuts over the next year, although David Bassanese from BetaShares and Sebastian Mullins from Schroders contend that the central bank will be less aggressive in reducing monetary policy. Meanwhile, Australian stocks are widely tipped to rally if the Federal Reserve does reduce the cast rate; Jun Bei Liu from Ten Cap says James Hardie Industries stands to benefit the most, given its exposure to the US housing market.

CORPORATES
UNITED STATES. FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD, BETASHARES CAPITAL LIMITED, SCHRODER INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT AUSTRALIA LIMITED, JAMES HARDIE INDUSTRIES PLC – ASX JHX, TEN CAP INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT PTY LTD

ANZ faces record $240m penalty for ripping off customers and government

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Original article by Michael Janda, Emilia Terzon
abc.net.au – Page: Online : 16-Sep-25

The ANZ Bank has agreed to a total financial penalty of $240m to settle a case brought by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission. The record fine includes an $85m penalty for the bank’s management of a $14bn government bond issuance in April 2023, and a $40m fine for overstating its bond trading turnover over a period of nearly two years. ANZ has also been fined $115m for widespread misconduct in its retail banking division; this includes failing to respond to hundreds of customer hardship notices, failing to refund fees to thousands of deceased customers, and making false and misleading statements regardings its savings interest rates. The penalty must be approved by the Federal Court.

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LIMITED – ASX ANZ, AUSTRALIAN SECURITIES AND INVESTMENTS COMMISSION, FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

4500 jobs cuts at ANZ not about profits

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Original article by David Ross
The Australian – Page: 13 & 19 : 10-Sep-25

The ANZ Bank has advised that its 2025-26 financial accounts will include a restructuring charge of $560m as part of its plan to shed about 10 per cent of its workforce. ANZ will retrench about 3,500 employees and 1,000 contractors as recently-appointed CEO Nuno Matos continues to reshape the ‘big four’ bank. Matos contends that the job cuts difficult but necessary in order to eliminate duplicated roles and simplify ANZ’s complex structure. He adds that the job cuts are "about getting things right" rather than profits. The Finance Sector Union’s president Wendy Streets says ANZ is discarding workers so its executives can feed an "out-of-control profit machine".

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LIMITED – ASX ANZ, FINANCE SECTOR UNION

CBA can win big from Klarna float

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Original article by Joyce Moullakis
The Australian Financial Review – Page: 15 & 19 : 3-Sep-25

Global digital bank and ‘buy now, pay later’ provider Klarna recently filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission for an IPO in the US. Klarna is currently believed to be valued at between $US13bn ($19.9bn) and $US14bn. The Commonwealth Bank’s latest annual report values its stake in Klarna at $956m, compared with a peak of nearly $3bn at the height of the BNPL boom. Analysts expect the Commonwealth Bank to sell down its Klarna stake, either via the IPO or on the open market; Hamish Carlisle from Merlon Capital Partners says Klarna has been "strategically peripheral" for the big four bank.

CORPORATES
COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA – ASX CBA, KLARNA, UNITED STATES. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, MERLON CAPITAL PARTNERS PTY LTD