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22 December 2024
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Professor Pamela Hanrahan of the UNSW provided much of the background material used by the Financial Services Royal Commission, and she reviews the final outcome in this BusinessThink interview.
The survey on the Royal Commission included hundreds of comments on what it overlooked. To give a perspective on how our readers felt about the results, here is a large sample.
Ken Henry deserves to be remembered for a remarkable contribution to Australia including the GFC rescue package, not for a few hours of misjudgement at the Royal Commission, being true to form.
The Royal Commission did good work but it is not above criticism: faced with limited time, it spent too long on some subjects and missed crucial issues that will impact millions.
After a year of analysing financial services like it has never been done before, the RC Final Report was released today with 76 recommendations which are expected to be adopted. What will change?
The big institutions looked outside banking for growth, but found complex conglomerate structures hard to manage and needing different skills. Now it's back to basics, just as another challenge looms.
Wealth management businesses can be profitable and part of a vertically-integrated financial services offer by banks. They could present their best products as being in the best interests of their clients.
The characteristic tone of the Royal Commission was set on the first day focus on financial advice, and no witness has been able to defend commissions to advisers and the vertical integration model.
It’s with heavy hearts that we announce Firstlinks’ co-founder and former Managing Editor, Graham Hand, has died aged 66. Graham was a legendary figure in the finance industry and here are three tributes to him.
Last year, I wrote an article suggesting returns from ASX stocks would trample those from housing over the next decade. One year later, this is an update on how that forecast is going and what's changed since.
Australia is in the early throes of an intergenerational wealth transfer worth an estimated $3.5 trillion. Here's a case study highlighting some of the challenges with transferring wealth between generations.
The Future Fund's original purpose was to meet the unfunded liabilities of Commonwealth defined benefit schemes. These liabilities have ballooned to an estimated $290 billion and taxpayers continue to be treated like fools.
ASFA provides a key guide for how much you will need to live on in retirement. Unfortunately it has many deficiencies, and the averages don't tell the full story of the growing gender superannuation gap.
The Big Four banks have had an extraordinary run and it’s left income investors with a conundrum: to stick with them even though they now offer relatively low dividend yields and limited growth prospects or to look elsewhere.