digital conveyancing users group

SAI to move to 100% in Espreon

2009-12-20T06:47:00.000+11:00

Source: News Bites

SAI Global Ltd is seeking to compulsorily acquire the remaining 0.8% of Espreon Ltd, following the company reaching 99.2% of ownership after the acquisition of Vectis's 36.4% shareholding in Espreon.

The consideration for the 34.5 million Espreon shares acquired from Vectis comprised a cash payment of $11.7 million and 3.3 million new SAI Global shares.

STOCK DASHBOARD: December 18, 2009

Online Property Auctions - yet to take off

2009-12-09T08:59:00.003+11:00

Online property auctions mean new ways of selling, novel challenges for the players, and questions for the regulators, but it could be the way of the future.

Melbourne on Saturday is like nowhere else in the world. That is when two of the city's most enduring cultural activities play out — Aussie rules and home auctions.

But just as AFL has had to compete with the rising popularity of soccer, Melbourne's enduring love affair with auctions could be challenged by a new concept.

Online property auctions have long been predicted as the next step for real estate, an industry in which buyers, sellers and agents have embraced internet marketing.

Property has been sold in Australia for some time through web-based negotiation systems such as eBay, which currently has 15 mostly rural homes for sale, including a $665,000 house in Penrith, NSW.

The new year will bring at least three new online home auction players onto the market, including one based in Melbourne. All will take a different approach to selling, raising a host of questions for regulators. But will any of them take off?

There is no doubt the industry is yet to harness the full selling potential of the web. However, attempts to catch up with the booming online trade for retail goods have so far fallen short of revolutionary.

In February, West Australian property site GeeWizAuctions.com claimed its first sale when a modest home in suburban Perth attracted several bids over a five-week cyber-auction.

Agent Laura Grimes of Supersell Realty said her "low-ball opening bid created huge interest" and while the property failed to reach its reserve price, she negotiated afterwards to get the sale.

"There was a huge saving in costs for the seller," she said. The site at present has 13 properties for sale, all from the same agency. It follows Queensland-based 2bid2.com.au that launched last year and operates in a similar way.

Both sites sign up vendors through real estate agents. But unlike GeeWiz, an auction on this site runs for just an hour, starting when a registered bidder makes a first offer.

With Brisbane's property market all but dead, the advantage for vendors is that hard-to-sell properties can stay listed indefinitely while they wait for an offer.

Several well-known agencies have a scattering of properties available on the site, including Ray White, LJ Hooker and Elders.

He said there was no greater risk of dummy bidding than at a public auction, with bidders required to view the property and register their details.

However, Real Estate Institute of Victoria chief executive Enzo Raimondo said the trend towards online was being tempered by user caution in what is often the biggest transaction of their lives.

"If you buy a house online or at an auction you should be confident that the same laws and protections apply," he said. "At this point they don't.

"The Sale of Land Act and the Estate Agents Act do not cater for physical and online sales . . . which is why the REIV asked the State Government to review its laws some 19 months ago."

Consumer Affairs Victoria is conducting a review. The REIV (the peak body for real estate agents) is particularly scathing of a website being formulated in Canberra called Uber Estate.

It will be the first to allow sellers and developers to list without the intermediary of an agent. Bidders will verify their identity through the same software used by online gambling sites.

"There's no chance of anyone being dodgy or fraudulent," founder Mark Higgins said. "It gives you as the seller total control in a way that's more transparent than anything you see on the weekend."

He said that while bidders must be Australian, the online format would be accessible to interstate and expatriate buyers.

Online-specialist agent Paul Osborne said Uber Estate would struggle because web portals such as domain.com.au excluded private sellers.

So it seems Melbourne's Saturday pastimes of a street auction in the morning and footy in the afternoon are safe for now.

Online auction sites mentioned

GeeWizAuctions.com WA

2bid2.com.au Qld

Uber Estate ACT

The Age

Author: Marika Dobbin
Date: December 7, 2009

Why does electronic conveyancing work in NZ and not Australia?

2009-11-26T19:53:00.011+11:00

This comparative table explains a lot of things

In summary, New Zealand's electronic land registry system works.

Australia has the problem that it has 8 separate land title systems, rules and governing legislation. The banks work cross all borders. They cannot afford to buy into 8 electronic systems and also cope with 8 legacy manual systems.

For any government system of electronic conveyancing to work in Australia, the barriers to electronic conveyancing must be removed,

Elimination of the paper Title

The first barrier is the paper duplicate certificate of title. In NZ this was abolished in 2002, 4 years prior to introducing the e-Dealing system in 2006. It is an imperative the Australian jurisdictions introduce uniform legislation for the total elimination of the duplicate paper certificate of title. Wasn't this the system that Torrens had in mind in the first place in 1858? Yet what we have seen so far from NSW and Victoria is suggested hybrid systems of titles (a mix of paper and electronic). From the government's perspective, if the strategic goal is to automate the update of the Land Registry, first, the paper title must go.

Rationalisation of multiple jurisdictions

A single Land Register? Now this will never happen and e-conveyancing from a government point of view will always be hampered by

multiple jurisdictions, rules and legislation
multiple land registries
politics of change

Creating a single land register makes sense, but it can be assumed "it wont happen in our lifetime". The Law Council of Australia is promoting the harmonisation of land laws in Australia, but State politics being what it is, again it looks like it wouldn't happen without a national referendum giving the Commonwealth power to be responsible for land management. The State's power to manage land is tied in with its powers to tax land and collect duties for land transfers.

The approach of a single State going it alone has proved one thing, this didn't work. Victoria tried this and was brought to its knees when the major banks withdrew their support.

However, where there is precedence there is hope. There used to be six separate State based stock exchanges, whereas they were all replaced by the one Australian Stock Exchange and the States acceded control of companies legislation to the Commonwealth Corporations Law. We can only live in hope.

Settlement

Its a straight forward observation but Government is responsible for running Land Registries and land registers. Governements have never been involved in settlements. Why the change?

In NZ, settlements are still organised between conveyancers and lenders. New Zealands e-Dealing system still respects the boundary between industry and government functions.

Yet in Australia there still persists this strategic goal to combine the settlements with registration. Yet this approach is flawed on several levels. Logically this approach cannot work unless every lender and every conveyancer was using the system. A 10% uptake is not enough. Government would need to mandate the system. So why the change? The lesson is government needs to remain focused on registration, not settlements.

Lessons from New Zealand

We can therefore see why New Zealand's phased approach has worked.

Single register
No duplicate title
E-dealing. (settlements not part of the system)
Mandate

More importantly, NZ had the foresight to deal with the elimination of the paper title as the first priority issue, which they successfully did in 2002, 4 years prior to introducing the e-Dealing system in 2006.

Elimination of the duplicate certificate of title is the greatest barrier to electronic registration systems. It is pointless for government to build an electronic registration system unless the duplicate is abolished. In Victoria, we have had a preview of the pCT and eCT, which is a hybrid system of paper and electronic titles. It just does not seem to make sense, just like the concept of being half pregnant.

Australia needs to focus on the following priorities

Elimination of the duplicate certificate of title
Introduce the standard xml title search
Government restricts its side to registration matters
Industry to develop its own collaborative systems between lenders and conveyancers

The vision is industry has its own framework of collaborative systems (shared workspaces, visibility of loan statuses and settlement booking systems). In addition, industry's strategic goal ought to be Unattended Settlements. An industry system of Unattended Settlements would therefore seamlessly dovetail with government e-registration systems.

So you have to give credit to the kiwis. They have shown the aussies a thing or two about making electronic conveyancing seem easy. As it should be.

originally published as a 247legal hayton kosky newsletter

ANZ to shed staff as it restructures mortgage processing

2009-11-24T10:15:00.000+11:00

ANZ is to shed 248 back office positions as it restructures its mortgage processing operations nationwide.

The job losses will come as the bank rationalises its network of mortgage centres in Sydney, Brisbane, South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania. About 150 jobs will absorbed by external providers contracted to take over certain document processing activities.

Others jobs will be relocated to Melbourne, while approximately 40 roles are expected to be exported to the bank's offshore processing centre in Bangalore, India.

In March, the bank ran into a political storm after it appeared to confirm speculation that it was to shift 500 jobs from its Melbourne back office and technology hub to its offshore development centre in Bangalore, which currently employs 3000 staff.

Responding to the political sensitivities, the bank in June committed to spend $10 million on a new support package for staff affected by offshoring.

Call-Centre Workers Suffer High Stress

2009-11-20T03:14:00.001+11:00

WORKERS in the fast-growing call-centre industry face high, and unique, levels of stress, a survey shows.

More than 250,000 people, or about one in 40 employed Australians, work in call centres and more than a third are always or often stressed at work.

RMIT academic Ruth Barton, who conducted the survey for the Australian Services Union, said high stress resulted in high turnover of staff and absenteeism.

Among factors causing stress were unrealistic performance targets, abuse from customers, high call volumes, repetitive work, concern their jobs would go overseas and excessive monitoring from management.

Dr Barton said the industry was unique as workers had little control over the pace of their work. That could even extend to feeling under pressure not to go to the toilet. About 1500 call-centre workers were surveyed.

BEN SCHNEIDERS - The Age 19 Nov 09

Monash professor to head property laws review

2009-11-11T14:49:00.000+11:00

VICTORIAN Deputy Premier and Attorney-General Rob Hulls has nominated the person to head a state-wide review of property law.

Monash University associate professor Pam O’Connor will oversee the first stage of the property law review that is set to update the state’s “archaic property laws and cut the mountains of red tape that surrounded them”, Hulls said.

“The Property Law Act is one of the most complicated, outdated and archaic pieces of legislation in Victoria and it is crying out for review,” Hulls said.

“The first stage of the review will also look at easements and covenants, which involve things like rights of way, sewerage and drainage, and affect most homeowners.”

Dr O’Connor’s appointment comes after Mr Hulls announced in August that the Victorian Law Reform Commission would be asked to review the state’s property laws and sought expressions of interest for the part-time Commissioner.

Hulls said the Property Law Review was a bold first step in the journey to overhaul Victoria’s property laws, which have for too long tied up people in red tape.

Dr O’Connor is associate dean at the Faculty of Law at Monash University, where she teaches property law.

“Dr O’Connor has demonstrated she has a strong conceptual grasp of the tasks required to fulfil this position, the strategic vision required to perform the review and combined with her broad knowledge of property law she is a very capable inaugural Commissioner of this review.”

11 November 2009 | by The New Lawyer

Accused Cash-For-Documents Scammer Bailed

2009-10-26T14:51:00.000+11:00

A woman accused of faking documents in Melbourne’s biggest international student cash-for-certificates scam has been released on $100,000 bail.

Chinese born XiaoYi Huang of Carnegie faced Melbourne Magistrates Court accused of presenting fake documents on behalf of international students applying for skilled migration visas to Australia.

The petite and pretty 24-year-old allegedly tried to pass off false education qualifications, work references and skills assessments to the Department of Immigration on behalf of her clients.

She was arrested on Friday, and her Queen Street offices raided by members of the Australian Federal Police Identity Security Strike Team and federal immigration officers.

Huang was charged with five offences relating to sham visa applications, including possessing 75 blank templates, that were allegedly to be used to create bogus documents.

Huang appeared in court for a brief hearing, with an interpreter, before being granted bail, which was unopposed by the prosecution.

Magistrate Amanda Chambers released her on bail with a $100,000 surety, and a set of special conditions requested by the prosecution.

Huang was ordered not to interfere with prosecution witnesses except for her business partner. She was ordered not to leave Australia, to surrender her passport and not to apply for another, and not to be involved in the preparation of any visa applications.

She is due to face court again in February.

The Age Mex Cooper with Chris Johnston

Dont you love Mont Blanc photos

2009-10-12T17:05:00.001+11:00

Safe Settlement Disbursements - NECS

2009-10-02T11:07:00.000+10:00

Financial settlements in NECS will involve electronic transfers of cleared funds. Because settlement is fast and made with cleared funds, it is critical that disbursement payments end up in the right accounts. For disbursement payments to financial institutions, government agencies and even NECS, this is not a problem as the account details (BSB No. & Account No.) are known in advance and can be pre-set in NECS and verified before first use in a settlement.

However, when disbursement payments are to be made to the vendor or a nominee of the vendor whose identity and account details only become known during the transaction, special precautions are necessary to ensure the funds go to the right accounts. A slip keying in account details could mean that an unrelated party gets a sudden deposit of substantial cleared funds in their account. This risk has been identified as a major concern for many industry practitioners and a disincentive to use electronic conveyancing.

The way this risk is to be dealt with is that the Subscriber arranging the disbursement payment on behalf of their client is to have a number of options. They will be able to choose between:

• paying the funds into a pre-set Trust Account from which they can pay the recipient subsequently by cheque or electronic funds transfer
• setting up the recipient’s account details in advance and ensuring their correctness before using them in a settlement
• having the recipient’s financial institution confirm the account details prior to settlement.

The first of these options might suit when delayed receipt of the funds is not important. The second option might suit when the recipient is a regular client of the Subscriber and likely to be frequently receiving disbursement payments from NECS settlements.

The third option is the one likely to be used most often. The recipient will be required to contact their financial institution, be identified as the financial institution’s customer and advise the financial institution of the pending settlement. The financial institution will enter NECS and confirm the account details entered by the Subscriber so that at settlement the payment can be confidently made directly into the financial institution’s customer’s account. In the event that the receiving financial institution does not confirm their customer’s account details prior to settlement, the funds will be paid into a suspense account at the financial institution from where the intended recipient can claim them after being successfully identified by the financial institution as the account holder.

These arrangements will provide all users with the means for ensuring settlement disbursements end up in the right account and transacting parties with confidence that their monies won’t end up in someone else’s account for an unscrupulous person to make off with.

NECS newsletter Oct 09

Xerox Buys Affiliated Computer For $6.4 Billion - NYTimes

2009-09-30T08:05:00.001+10:00

Ursula M. Burns, the chief executive of Xerox, declared on Monday that the company’s plan to buy Affiliated Computer Services, an outsourcing services company, for $6.4 billion would be “a game-changer” for Xerox.

That could be standard business hyperbole, of course, and only time will tell whether the deal proves to be a winner for Xerox. But the game is indeed changing for big technology suppliers catering to corporate customers as they shift to depend less on products and more on services.

And technology companies, like Xerox, are often buying services companies to accelerate the transition. Only last week, for example, Dell announced that it would buy Perot Systems for $3.9 billion. Last year, Hewlett-Packard bought another large technology services company, Electronic Data Systems, for $13.9 billion.

The shift to services is being fueled by financial and strategic considerations and by the evolution of technology itself. Services businesses tend to be steadier sources of revenue and profit than product businesses, which are more susceptible to peaks and valleys of economic cycles. Services businesses also foster closer relations with corporate customers and often yield higher profit margins.

The cost and complexity of computing, analysts say, has led many corporate customers to conclude that owning and operating their own hardware and software is an expensive, distracting burden. So customers are pressing suppliers to not just sell them technology but to make it work for them to streamline business tasks like procurement, customer tracking, record handling and product design.

“For a lot of these companies, there is a real blurring between what is a product and what is a service,” said Christine Ferrusi Ross, an analyst at Forrester Research. “The concept of what a product company is anymore really has to be rethought.”

Xerox and other technology companies that are expanding their reach in services are following a model that I.B.M. pursued more than a decade ago and General Electric even earlier.

They recognized that to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, companies needed to move into higher-value services, which are less vulnerable than product businesses to being undercut by low-cost manufacturers abroad.

Technology advances are making it easier for suppliers to provide computing as a service, delivered over the Internet from remote data centers in the so-called cloud computing model. Software can move off desktop personal computers to become a Web-based service, like Google’s e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets, and the online customer-relationship management software of Salesforce.com.

The digitization of all kinds of business records and documents also opens the door to automating business tasks and mining business data for everything from customer-service problems to sales opportunities.

The share of corporate technology budgets spent on hardware and software, which are capital expenditures, has been declining in recent years. That percentage fell to 28 percent this year, from 36 percent in 2004, according to estimates from Gartner, a research firm. The rest is spent on operational expenses, including services.

The trend is not a matter of rising labor costs at corporate technology departments, because headcounts have not increased, said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president in charge of research at Gartner.

“The shift toward external services is quite pronounced,” Mr. Sondergaard said.

Analysts say the weak economy promises to accelerate the tilt toward spending on services as companies resist bigger capital budgets or adding workers to their payrolls.

In an interview, Ms. Burns said the Affiliated Computer deal was largely a matter of following her customers. “They want us to intelligently knit together all this stuff — the information that makes their businesses run,” said Ms. Burns, who took over in July with the retirement of Anne M. Mulcahy.

Xerox said that the combined company would have $22 billion in revenue and that nearly 80 percent of that total would be recurring revenue based on services and equipment contracts. The company’s services business would triple, to $10 billion.

In an interview, Lynn Blodgett, chief executive of Affiliated Computer, said that his company would certainly benefit from tapping into the Xerox worldwide sales force. But he also emphasized that it would benefit from the Xerox research in imaging and text-recognition technology. Affiliated Computer handles and processes back-office documents like loan-processing papers for banks and Medicaid claims for health care providers and states.

Xerox, Mr. Blodgett said, has technology that can begin to scan patient claims, for example, searching for patterns in the data that could suggest the best therapies for managing chronic diseases like diabetes. “It allows you to look at claims and reach conclusions,” he said. “It’s technology we just don’t have.”

The Xerox cash-and-stock offer was valued at $63.11 a share, based on the closing price of Xerox shares on Friday. Shares of Affiliated Computer, which closed at $47.25 on Friday, rose 14 percent on Monday, to $53.86. Xerox shares fell 14 percent, to $7.68.

Affiliated Computer, based in Dallas, was founded in 1988 to handle data-processing chores for banks and has grown steadily since. Today it has $6.5 billion in revenue and 74,000 employees.

Indeed, the company is sizable, with 20,000 more employees than Xerox, and analysts say the challenge of integrating the two companies may have contributed to the fall in Xerox shares. “Xerox has not done a lot of big merger deals, so one concern is that A.C.S. may not be easily digestible,” said Peter Falvey, managing director of Revolution Partners, a small investment bank that specializes in technology companies.

Affiliated Computer has also been a subject of inquiries by the Securities and Exchange Commission and grand jury proceedings in recent years, focusing on stock option grants and the accuracy of some customer records. The inquiries and repeated changes of chief executives and chief financial officers over the last five years prompted Disclosure Insight, an independent research firm, to rate the company a high risk. There are no current investigations, said Kevin Lightfoot, a spokesman for Affiliated Computer. “It’s all been put behind us,” he said.

Analysts say other services companies that might be takeover candidates in the wake of the Xerox-Affiliated Computer deal include Computer Sciences Corporation, CGI in Canada and a few Indian outsourcing companies like WNS and Patni. Several of the largest remaining independent technology services companies like Accenture or the leading Indian outsourcers like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, analysts say, are probably too costly and unwilling to be acquired.

“The merger trend isn’t over, but you are running out of companies that are small enough to reasonably acquire and yet large enough to make a difference,” said Rod Bourgeois, an analyst at Bernstein Research.

30/9/09

Chinese buyers fuel top-end property boom

2009-09-19T00:37:00.000+10:00

NICK Johnstone is a man on a mission. Next week, the Brighton estate agent will fly to Shanghai with the aim of selling 30 of Melbourne's most expensive homes to Chinese buyers.

It will be the first time a Melbourne agency has attended the China International Luxury Property Show, but it is just one example of a phenomenon that has transformed Australia's residential market.

''Australia is the flavour of the month amongst the Chinese investors,'' Mr Johnstone, 41, said yesterday. ''They love property and there's plenty of money over there so they're good clients to have.''

While Chinese buyers have fuelled the top-end real estate revival, they are also courting controversy, with some local house hunters complaining they are being priced out by foreigners who have no intention of living in their new properties.

A few critics go further, arguing Chinese money is now putting upwards pressure on interest rates.

But you will not catch Mr Johnstone of J. P. Dixon complaining. He has made at least 40 per cent of sales this year to the Chinese. Other agents in the east and south-eastern suburbs have reported the same level of demand.

''We've had several buy properties sight unseen, just over the internet and phone.'' Mr Johnstone said. ''A lady from Shanghai, whose son goes to Wesley College, bought four houses in Brighton from us in two months, worth $20 million.

''They buy them to land bank, not to rent them out. The houses just sit vacant because they are after the capital growth.''

The floodgates opened on foreign investment in March when the Federal Government relaxed its rules on property ownership.

The changes made it easier for foreign companies and temporary residents, such as 12-month business visa holders, foreign students, and their parents, to invest.

Last month, Treasurer Wayne Swan announced a further relaxation of Australia's foreign investment screening to ''help boost Australia's growth''.

But the big spend-up is being fuelled by more than just Australian policy change.

Armadale entrepreneur Barry Jan, who runs property shopping tours from China to Australia, said the Communist Party had had an about-face on citizens investing their wealth overseas. ''People are investing now in case they can't get their money out later,'' he said.

Kew property adviser Monique Wakelin said many Chinese had come to see Australian property as a stable hedge against global economic tumult and the potential devaluation of the yuan.

''They are looking for avenues to protect at least part of their wealth, and A-grade Melbourne residential property fits the bill.'' The confluence of events has seen Chinese money inflating prices for top-end homes by at least 10 per cent in a matter of months, according to Boroondara agent James Connell from Marshall White.

''Chinese people have effectively kick-started our economy and underpinned all our housing values in inner Melbourne,'' he said.

Keen to cash in on the boom, Marshall White, J. P. Dixon and other big agencies such as Jellis Craig are hastily establishing connections with offshore accounts, lawyers and businessmen to funnel a stream of buyers into Melbourne.

Also in hot demand are Mandarin-speaking Melbourne real estate agents and property lawyers.

Meanwhile, Australia's largest developers - including Australand, Central Equity, Simonds, Becton - are setting up offices in China and Hong Kong to spruik off-the-plan developments.

And an industry of ''Australian property and migration'' exhibitions has burgeoned in the cities and mining towns, such as Taiyuan, attracting hundreds of people.

Yet all the evidence put forward about the property revolution is so far anecdotal because there is no measure being kept on the amount of investment by temporary residents in residential property.

The Government's March law change abolished mandatory reporting of such acquisitions in a bid to ''enhance flexibility in the market''.

What is certain is that in the past financial year before the change, foreign investment in Australian residential property increased by a third to $20.4 billion from the year before. Victoria attracted 21 per cent of that investment, according to the Foreign Investment Review Board's annual report released last month.

MARIKA DOBBIN
September 19, 2009
The Age

Plan to reduce mortgage expenses

2009-09-15T07:13:00.000+10:00

Karen Dearne | September 15, 2009 | The Australian

THE long-awaited National Electronic Conveyancing System could save lenders up to $46 million in mortgage settlement costs a year, the LIXI Industry Forum heard last week.

After years of political wrangling, the NSW, Victorian and Queensland governments have begun talks aimed at forming a company to run the proposed real estate exchange platform.

The platform will be based on data standards developed by the Lending Industry XML Initiative (LIXI) for online processing of property transactions such as home loan applications, approvals and conveyancing.

LIXI chief executive Erik Fenna said a survey of members on the costs of settlement and the benefit of electronic integration -- assuming NECS was completed and had full take-up -- identified cost savings to lenders of about 15 per cent.

"There would also be benefits for consumers, but we weren't looking to measure that at this stage," he said.

"This is never going to happen if lenders don't buy into it, and they won't unless they see a benefit for themselves."

Survey participants estimated that the average cost to lenders to settle a mortgage with a large bank was about $450, and using an electronic system would reduce that cost by about $68.

"Across the industry, that represents $46 million in the past financial year, so there is substantial money to be saved," Mr Fenna said.

While LIXI has no role to play in the design or operation of NECS, LIXI members -- banks, credit unions, brokers, mortgage aggregators, insurers and solicitors -- were insisting on a single national data standard for the system.

"They've made it abundantly clear that there can only be one standard for communication and integration with the settlement platform," he said.

"NECS has approached us, and we will be working together on that."

Mr Fenna said LIXI might also become involved in the development of standards for processes normally considered internal to banks.

"Banks are surprisingly similar in what they do, from a core platform perspective," he said. "Their competitive advantage is in their products, the interest rates they can offer and quality of service.

"But where banking systems are talking to external systems, or where banking systems are modular and use contracted outside resources, then standards become very valuable."

While banks can get a first-mover advantage through custom-building systems to provide new products and services, "the drawback comes down the track when you go to rebuild them, and find you have a load of customised things that you then need to maintain".

Banks now saw competitive advantage in being first to market with mobile banking platforms, for instance.

"In our view, mobile banking is becoming a commodity, and the interface between mobile and transactional banking platforms could be standardised," Mr Fenna said.

Jobs go at Westpac due to St George merger

2009-09-08T08:45:00.001+10:00

By George Lekakis | Herald Sun | September 04, 2009

WESTPAC has sent hundreds of employees packing this year as the group pushes ahead on the merger of back-office systems and technology platforms with its newly acquired St George subsidiary.

Finance Sector Union national secretary Leon Carter told The Herald Sun that at least 600 jobs had been made redundant, mostly in NSW in document processing and other administrative areas, and that thousands more jobs were on the line as Westpac advanced the integration of mortgage processing, accounts management and a host of other business functions.

Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly has signalled on several occasions this year that back-office jobs would be cut from the group as the integration program was implemented, The Herald Sun reports.

Mr Carter said the union had sought assurances from Westpac that no roles would be axed at the mortgage processing centre in Adelaide and a call centre in Launceston, but the bank had not responded.

"The bank has refused to give us any such assurances on these jobs," he said. "We are very concerned about the security of those jobs in Launceston and Adelaide."

Your Say

I worked for St George and won a $50 dragon dollar cheque, when I left, they would not honour the check, and that was personally given to me by Antion (the big cheese) I don't ...
(Read More)
Mike Williams of Sydney
Bank spokesman David Lording confirmed that redundancies had occurred this year, but said the union had overstated the number.

However, he would not say how many staff had been made redundant. "It's smaller than that (600)," he said. "We think the union may have misinterpreted data that we have provided them."

Mr Carter stood by the 600 redundancies figure, saying that most of the affected staff had left the bank.

"It's not a good look for a bank that makes a multi-billion dollar profit," he said.

"One of the frustrations we've got with them is they won't tell us what the timetable is for the integration program which we can see will bring more pain for our members."

Westpac has confirmed publicly that it is exploring options to relocate some processing activities to offshore providers in India as part of the integration.

Mr Lording said the bank had hired frontline customer service staff this year.

"We've put on over 500 bankers during the course of the year and while we have made some adjustments to back-office roles we have no across-the-board job reductions at Westpac," he said.

"We've had no head-count reduction targets."

The staff cuts at Westpac come at a sensitive time for the union and the bank following the expiry of a three-year industrial agreement in June.

Negotiations between the parties on a new deal are scheduled to begin in October, but could be complicated by potential industrial disputes over redundancies.

The St George subsidiary this week embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign across Australia with its senior management claiming that it would open up to 20 new branches in the next 12 months.

However, a St George spokesman would not say whether the network would be increased by that number on a net basis after also confirming that "some existing branches would be relocated".

"We've conducted a review of our branches and found that some could be in better locations," the St George spokesman said.

Talks begin on national e-conveyancing system

2009-09-04T06:31:00.001+10:00

Chris Merritt | September 04, 2009 the auztralian

THREE state governments have opened talks with lawyers and bankers aimed at establishing a company to run the long-promised national electronic conveyancing system.

The proposed company would be owned initially by the governments of NSW, Victoria and Queensland but those close to the talks say equity would later be offered to other jurisdictions.

Senior officials representing the three founding equity holders have distributed documents outlining the proposed corporate structure.

The company's board would consist of representatives of each of the three state governments as well as representatives of the legal profession, the major banks and non-lawyer conveyancers. An independent board member would be appointed to chair the new organisation.

If the talks succeed, it could help all state governments qualify for $550 million in commonwealth funding for undertaking 27 major reforms that have been endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments.

The national e-conveyancing system is not a priority under the COAG agreement, but its successful completion would help persuade the federal government to make the $550m reward payments to the states.

NSW Land Minister Tony Kelly, who helped drive the latest initiative, said his government supported "a truly national scheme that all stakeholders can access and use easily, wherever they might be, whatever state they might be in".

"The system will work best only if all the states come on board, which is why we have been working closely with the other states, in particular Victoria and Queensland, to make this happen," he said.

"To realise savings to industry participants and the community, it is essential that the system be integrated with the systems and standards used by the lending and conveyancing industries today."

Mr Kelly said technology had provided an opportunity to modernise "one of the most traditional, most basic transactions at the core of both business and family life, so it is important to get it right".

"To do that, we have to bring along all the industry peak bodies to ensure that the lawyers and bankers are secure enough with the system and its governance arrangements that they encourage their members to use it.

"This would mark a huge technology shift in conveyancing business practices and processes but I think there is the collective will to make that shift.

"Certainly the technology is here but it has to be cost-effective and it has to meet industry requirements," Mr Kelly said.

The initiative by the three states comes soon after Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Deregulation Minister Craig Emerson rejected a plea for $20m in federal funding to establish the e-conveyancing company.

Les Taylor, who chairs the steering committee that has been planning the new system, had warned that unless the company is established, there is a risk that the savings from the project will be "lost for at least a generation".

Those savings have been estimated by industry groups to be worth $250m annually.

Estate agent jailed for two years

2009-08-31T08:52:00.000+10:00

A Melbourne real estate agent was jailed this week for two years after duping an elderly man in to sell his property to him for less than half the value.

real estate business

Tassie - A healthy island state for innovation

2009-08-29T11:33:00.001+10:00

ENTREPRENEUR: Morris Kaplan | August 29, 2009

TASMANIA is well endowed with natural beauty and resources; it is also a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship with companies such as Tassal and Tasmanian Alkaloids on the global stage.

Local entrepreneur John Elkerton who is co-founder and chief executive of burgeoning e-health provider Healthcare Software, says there are advantages in being a business in Tasmania.

"I live in the bush with wallabies and echidnas in the back garden yet I can walk to my Hobart office in 30 minutes," he says. "It's a nice way to live and do business. I think as a smaller player we can be more strategic."

He says e-health, a nascent industry that enables the transition away from paper to electronic records, offers vast potential for his fledgling business.

"Most people assume that whenever they seek medical assistance then people who are to treat them have access to their previous medical record," Elkerton says.

"The reality is that the clinician can only ever see the records that accumulate at that point. A GP only has their record; a hospital only has your record for your stay at that hospital. Such poor communication results in less than ideal treatment choices. In an emergency situation, say you had an allergy to morphine and you're on holiday and have an accident and they give you morphine. That's a potentially life-threatening situation. It's a stark reminder of the lack of a unified record, amazing in this day and age."

Established in 2005, Healthcare Software has developed a clinical suite of software for hospitals to manage medications, patient referrals, discharge summaries, electronic prescribing, as well as lab and radiology results.

The software takes away the "old school" method of pen and paper, and streamlines communication between the hospital, community care providers and healthcare professionals.

The company, whose applications have already been implemented in 17 major hospitals throughout Tasmania and South Australia, is looking to increase that to 35 by this time next year.

Elkerton and his 12 staff are focusing their efforts on entering other states, as well as branching out internationally into New Zealand and Singapore. "Healthcare in Australia still revolves around pen, paper and human memory," he says. "Medication errors cause more deaths every year in Australia than the road toll.

"Our product significantly increases patient safety by reducing medication errors and adverse drug reactions."

Privacy hurdles and the fact technology hasn't fully arrived in health are certainly a cause for disquiet, but the mix is a veritable petri dish for an entrepreneur: a problem looking for a solution.

Elkerton's "problem" emerged during his 13 years in clinical (hospital) pharmacy in Australia and Britain.

"My work was all paper-based," he says.

"There was a folder with a patient record in it. Patient leaves hospital; commonly, the pharmacist's clinical record is destroyed or lost. I thought surely there must be some value in having an application that brought together all the information that a clinician or pharmacist required as well as being the point to further document and access for the future.

"It was a common paradigm then that hospitals were bypassed by the 90s IT revolution. Even today, an admission into hospital will result in a substantial bound-paper record of your stay in hospital."

Elkerton says the opportunity presented itself as a simple set of numbers.

"A medium-sized hospital may have a dozen of more clinical pharmacists doing the basic bottle labelling as well as being out on the ward talking to the doctors, nurses; educating patients. It piqued my interest. If there were so many people in this role, surely there would be an appetite for a solution which would support their activity."

He says his early days in business were focused on developing software.

"I dealt with the full range of health professionals, (but) I knew my weaknesses," he says.

"I was aware of my lack of business experience but I was passionate about the work and its potential to mitigate risks. You build it wrong the first time, but you build it right the second time.

"In 2005, I partnered with an IT software developer to build a commercial software package. It was a symbiotic relationship. It was 2 1/2 years of development. Apart from a small investment from a Tasmanian incubator fund, it was very lean times for the business. We were lucky to have the (incubator) funds. That kept us going for a while, then we secured a grant from AusIndustry to be able to commercialise and present product to market in 2007-08. The reality is that to develop enterprise software is hugely expensive. It takes a long time and lot of resources to get it there. No one had actually gone down the path of committing to such a substantial undertaking.

"First, it was clinical pharmacy; now we're across all aspects of medication management. The underlying theme ... is of naivety. IT business is not for the faint-hearted; it's a big numbers game.

"IT is hard, especially when you are selling software and health IT is even harder. The sale cycles are so long. The critical success factor for a small to medium-sized IT company in Australia is about gaining contracts. We've been doing this, invariably involving tenders.

"You're up against the mega companies. When we go into bat we are against multinationals. It all adds up to a substantial challenge."

A national electronic health record is a long-term aim of the federal government and opportunities in the IT industry abound.

"This is emerging as a big industry," Elkerton says.

"You've got an ageing population; you have an unsustainable growth of health as a percentage of GDP. It's heading for a train wreck unless we can develop some 21st-century modes for managing health. We have great IT and a very well advanced health system, but we can do better. Denmark is doing well; while the UK has invested a lot of money. We try to stay on that cutting edge of being the latest and the greatest."

Paper records need binning

2009-08-29T11:31:00.000+10:00

THE transition away from paper to electronic records is referred to as e-health and is becoming one of the hottest topics in health and IT.

For good reason. A recent report commissioned by the Rudd government highlighted the high occurrence of death and injury caused through medical error and miscommunication between care providers and patients.

It is estimated more people die as a direct result of these errors than are killed on Australia's roads each year.

To meet the vast demands of the health sector, solutions have been developed for all segments of the industry, providing support from administration to clinical areas.

These solutions are provided through a variety of sources, from the more traditional method of an on-site stand-alone server to the emerging trend of web-based platforms, which enable greater flexibility in the delivery and management of patient care.

John EIkerton, chief executive of Healthcare Software, says if you are a typical middle-aged Australian, you will have had several hospital visits, consulted more than one GP and collected prescriptions from any number of community pharmacies.

"So where is your medical record?" he says. "In most cases, each of these locations will hold a fragment of your record and to date there is no widespread collation of these details.

"The question is: how can the hospital, GP or other carer make the best decisions for your health when they cannot get a complete picture of a medical history?"

While businesses rely mostly on computerised records, this is not the case in our hospitals where documentation of patient results and treatment is still primarily paper-based.

Morris Kaplan The Australian 29 aug 09

We're on the home straight

2009-08-21T20:58:00.005+10:00

Winner of the grand national electronic conveyancing cup is ....

NECS may well be heading into the home straight, but it would appear the rest of the horses are still not even on the track or only just heading into the starting gates.

The State Governments are still arguing do we enter no duplicate title or do we bet on the rising star being the xml title search?

The Commonwealth Government says they are putting up the prize money but at 100 to 1 no one takes them seriously.

Lawyers are nowhere to be seen. They're still riding on faxes with a copy in the mail. Hardly to be seen is scan and email.

The Banks should be riding on collaborative solutions but they appear to have entered their pony into the Hong Kong Jockey Club Stakes or was that Bangalore?

With NECS heading into the home straight, it is really looking like a one horse race.

Like any memorable Melbourne Cup race (think phar lap 1930, jean shrimpton 1965, damien oliver 2002, makybe diva 3 back to back wins) you need all the horses in the starting gates at the same time and a close finish.

Its no point watching NECS heading up the home straight for an uncontested win. If unattended settlements is the finish line, everyone has to start getting serious.

Training starts at 4am and here are the tasks -

State Governments
Abolish the duplicate certificate of title (or at least publicly state their position on the issue)
Introduce a standardised XML Title Search

Lawyers and Conveyancers
Start using scanning technologies

Banks
Introduce and use collaborative web 2.0 solutions in conjunction with conveyancing practitioners, valuers and mortgage insurers. If banks need convincing on the merits of collarboration, a recent quote from New York Times interview with John T. Chambers, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems is on the mark. Q. What’s changed in the last few years? A. Big time, the importance of collaboration. Big time, people who have teamwork skills, and their use of technology. If they’re not collaborative, if they aren’t naturally inclined toward collaboration and teamwork, if they are uncomfortable with using technology to make that happen both within Cisco and in their own life, they’re probably not going to fit in here.

The reality is that old ways of conveyancing will eventually die. However, lawyers and conveyancers will move at different speeds, so industry and government should be focused on matters that will still value the old but transition them to the new. There has to be a transition from old paper technologies which have been in use in the current form more or less for the past 150 years and probably for the next 10 plus years. This means incremental changes which we have already seen such as the change from paper searches to online title searches.

Back to the racing analogy, we know where finish line is and that is unattended settlements. This is not a short sprint, but like the Melbourne Cup the race covers a distance of 3,200 metres. Just to qualify for the Melbourne Cup there are a number of lead-up races which I will cover in future newsletters.

247legal August Newsletter

Client Identity Verification - NECS

2009-08-21T18:30:00.001+10:00

In the electronic environment of NECS the transacting parties will not generally sign Land Registry instruments. Instead they will authorize a Subscriber to do so on their behalf. It is, therefore, essential that the Subscriber is satisfied about the identity of their Client.

The standard of Client Identity Verification is a critical risk mitigation measure in NECS. It gives all of the participants in a NECS transaction confidence about who they are dealing with. After considering the existing options for a CIV standard the National Project Team came to the conclusion that there needs to be a purpose-built standard for NECS. The standard will need to facilitate electronic property transactions, be compatable with current banking industry practice and expected future legal and conveyancing industry practices under the Anti Money Laundering legislation, and satisfy the Land Registries concerns for mitigating fraud and minimising compensation claims on their assurance funds.

More work is currently being done on determining the detail of the CIV standard for NECS and how it will be applied in particular circumstances.

NECS newsletter Aug 09

Tanner rules out e-conveyancing cash

2009-08-21T11:11:00.001+10:00

The Australian
Chris Merritt | August 21, 2009

THE appointment of Peter Harris to a senior role in the federal public service coincides with the government's refusal to provide $20 million in seed funding for the national e-conveyancing system.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Deregulation Minister Craig Emerson have outlined the government's position in a letter to Les Taylor, who chairs the national electronic conveyancing system steering committee.

Mr Taylor, a former general counsel of the Commonwealth Bank, had warned in May that unless repayable seed funding of $20m was provided for the national project, it was at risk of "complete failure".

In their response, Mr Tanner and Dr Emerson told Mr Taylor that the federal government had already agreed to give the states $550m as part of an agreement in which the states would undertake 27 projects, including a national e-conveyancing system.

That agreement includes payment of $100m in "up-front facilitation funding in 2008-09".

"Facilitation funding is not tied to any specific reform and its allocation is a decision for the states and territories," they wrote.

"It is the view of the commonwealth that this amount is sufficient to fulfil these obligations and no further funding will be allocated to facilitate delivery of the agreed reforms."

The agreement with the states shows that none of the $550m has been earmarked for the e-conveyancing system.

If the states fail to meet their commitment to establish the system, they could still receive their full reward payments from the commonwealth so long as they make progress in other areas covered by the agreement.

PS chief linked to $50m e-conveyancing failure

2009-08-21T08:51:00.002+10:00

Chris Merritt, Legal affairs editor | August 21, 2009

Article from: The Australian

ONE of the federal government's top public servants has been accused of having a vested interest in ensuring that Victoria's troubled e-conveyancing system becomes a template for the promised national system.

Peter Harris, who is about to take office as secretary of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, was caught in a "hopeless" conflict of interest, according to opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin.

"This chap will no doubt have a very significant vested interest in the Victorian system being seen as the template for a national system," Senator Minchin said. "It will reflect enormously badly on him if that is not the case, or if the Victorian system is made utterly redundant."

Before being appointed this week to the federal public service, Mr Harris ran the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, which spent at least $50 million building a state-based e-conveyancing system.

If the long-promised single national system is rolled out, it would call into question the continued need for a separate Victorian system.

"I fear that (Mr Harris) will be hopelessly conflicted," said Senator Minchin.

"It is almost the situation where he would have to declare that conflict of interest and play no part whatsoever in the commonwealth's moves in this area."

However, a spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said Mr Harris would be leading a department that had no involvement in the national e-conveyancing project.

Senator Conroy said Mr Harris had extensive public service experience and would be a valuable leader of the department.

Senator Minchin said he was also concerned about whether the troubled history of electronic conveyancing in Victoria meant Mr Harris might not be the best person to run the department during the rollout of the $43billion national broadband network.

While the state government says the system, known as ECV, has processed more than 600 "transactions", it has been boycotted by solicitors and the major banks. As a result, just one of the matters processed by ECV has been a full property settlement.

Senator Minchin said Mr Harris had been head of a state government department "that has had responsibility for what appears to be an unbelievable white elephant and bottomless pit of wasted Victorian government money".

"If you cannot manage the establishment of an electronic conveyancing system in Victoria without it becoming a major flop, then what does that say about the $43bn broadband network?" Senator Minchin asked.

State opposition frontbencher David Davis said Victorians were entitled to be surprised by Mr Harris's appointment.

"This IT white elephant has been overseen by DSE and Mr Harris at an expense of more than $50m and unfortunately not more than one full conveyancing transaction has been completed," he said.

Related article

Poor track record

IT is almost possible to feel sorry for Peter Harris. Before he has even taken office as the new secretary of the department of communications and the digital economy, Nick Minchin is laying into him.

But Harris has an unfortunate track record in Victoria as head of the department that oversaw the construction of the state's electronic conveyancing system, ECV.

It was on Harris's watch that his department churned through $50 million in public money building a conveyancing system that fails to meet the bare minimum requirements of the conveyancing industry.

The Law Institute of Victoria will not recommend it and the major banks will not use it. As head of the department of communications, Harris will not be responsible for electronic conveyancing. But he'll have a key role in the massive national broadband network. That project is so important that Minchin was entirely justified in turning the spotlight on what happened in Victoria.

'Soup nazi' hacked 130 million credit cards: prosecutors

2009-08-18T07:46:00.001+10:00

August 18, 2009 - The Age - AP

United States prosecutors have charged a Miami man with the nation's largest case of credit and debit card data theft.

Authorities said Albert Gonzales, 28, had broken his own record for identity theft by hacking into more retail networks to steal data from 130 million accounts.

Gonzales, already in jail awaiting trial for allegedly hacking into the computer networks of eight major retailers and stealing data related to 40 million credit cards, was indicted today in New Jersey, charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information.

Prosecutors say Gonzales, who is also known online as "soupnazi," targeted customers of convenience store giant 7-Eleven, and supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers. Heartland Payment Systems, a New Jersey-based card payment processor, was also targeted.

Gonzales is awaiting trial in New York for allegedly helping hack the computer network of the national restaurant chain Dave and Buster's. The trial in that case is due to begin next month.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the new charges.

The Justice Department said the new case represents the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach ever charged in the United States, beginning in October 2006.

Gonzales allegedly devised a sophisticated attack to penetrate the computer networks, steal the card data, and send that data to computer servers in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The indictment also charges that Gonzales and his co-conspirators used sophisticated hacker techniques to cover their tracks and avoid detection.

Also last year, the Justice Department announced additional charges against Gonzales and others for hacking retail companies' computers for the theft of approximately 40 million credit cards. At the time, that was believed to be the biggest single case of hacking private computer networks to steal credit card data.

AP

Man jailed after using Limewire for ID theft

2009-08-13T07:37:00.002+10:00

A Seattle man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for using the LimeWire file-sharing service to lift personal information from computers across the US. The man, Frederick Wood, typed words like 'tax return' and 'account' into the LimeWire search box. That allowed him to find and access computers on the LimeWire network with shared folders that contained tax returns and bank account information. ... He used the information to open accounts, create identification cards and make purchases. 'Many of the victims are parents who don't realize that LimeWire is on their home computer,' [said Kathryn Warma of the US Attorney's Office].

Original Story - PC World

Myer David Jones caught in $500,000 credit scam

2009-08-06T03:28:00.001+10:00

Steve Butcher
August 6, 2009

A STRING of leading Melbourne retail stores — including Melbourne’s premier outlets Myer and David Jones — have been victims of a $500,000 scam whose syndicate ringleaders recruited overseas students.

The stores, which included Dick Smith and JB Hi-Fi, were duped by fake credit cards the students used to buy hundreds of gift cards.

Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday heard Ching Boon Goh, 25, produced the cards from an embossing machine, blank credit cards and stolen credit cards numbers from overseas. Goh, who added other identification to match the cards, recruited numerous Malaysian and other overseas students to attend the stores between October and January this year.

In documents tendered to court, Goh obtained about $226,000 from the students who bought gift cards, which are basically cash substitutes, valued between $50 and $500.

Goh then onsold the gift cards to other offenders, allegedly including Rubesch Thannanjeyan, for 70 per cent of their value.

example of identity fraud

CBA and Westpac corner mortgage market

2009-08-03T07:59:00.000+10:00

Nick Tabakoff | August 03, 2009

Article from: The Australian

AUSTRALIA'S "big two" banks, the Commonwealth and Westpac, have tightened their stranglehold on the national mortgage book by taking more than 85 per cent of new mortgage lending by the banking sector during the June quarter.

The extraordinary growth means the combined size of the mortgage books of the big two has now topped $500 billion for the first time.

A report obtained by The Australian has shown that of the $35.6bn of new mortgage lending achieved during the quarter, the merged CBA/Bankwest and Westpac/St George achieved an extraordinary 85.2 per cent, or $30.3bn, of the growth.

But the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots of the banking sector has seen the head of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, Graeme Samuel, reiterate fears about the state of competition between larger and smaller banks.

He said yesterday there was "no one concerned with competition that would say the current situation is healthy".

The new figures released by financial intelligence firm CoreData show the merged Westpac/St George had the fastest-growing mortgage book during the quarter, with $15.2bn in new mortgage lending. CBA/Bankwest grew by $15.1bn.

The figures come days after Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority statistics showed the big four banks dominating deposits and home lending.

Westpac/St George was the aggressive mover for the period, with growth in its mortgage book almost doubling from the combined $7.7bn figure for the March quarter. CBA/Bankwest and Westpac/St George now have just under half of all outstanding mortgages in Australia by value. The enlarged CBA has 25.2 per cent of the market with $260bn, while the merged Westpac has 23.3 per cent with $241bn.

By comparison, National Australia Bank and ANZ combined have 25.5 per cent market share. NAB has a mortgage loan book of $133.9bn and the ANZ $130.4bn. NAB recorded mortgage growth of just 2.2 per cent in the June quarter, while ANZ's growth was 1.8 per cent. While NAB and ANZ record tepid growth, tier-two banks -- as well as foreign-owned banks operating locally -- are losing their small market share.

The big four raised their combined market share of residential lending to a record high of 74.1 per cent during the June quarter, up from 72.2 per cent in the March quarter. But at the end of the June quarter, the tier-two banks -- made up mainly of regionals such as Suncorp, and Bendigo and Adelaide -- had an 11.2 per cent market share, 0.3 per cent below the 11.5 per cent share they recorded at the end of March.

CoreData principal Andrew Inwood said the regional banks, in particular, needed to reinvent themselves after recently trying to match big banks in cutting mortgage interest rates.

"Competing with CBA on price is like trying to compete with Walmart on price," he said. "The regionals should be focusing on their ability to take care of customers in a way with which the big two can't possibly compete."