Credit Cards

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A result that will surprise a few observers, with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia reported unaudited cash earnings of around $2.65 billion for the quarter, up by +6% on improved margins. 
There were seasonal declines in personal loans and credit card arrears.
An interesting point of note was that 90-plus day home loan arrears were tracking at 0.59%, marginally lower from the preceding quarter. 
CBA noted that 90-plus day home loan arrears have declined slightly over the past few years to 0.48% when the state of Western Australia is excluded.
<img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cfk8FlVcMbY/WgNFN4xiRpI/AAAAAAAAm7A/fnLLJO2PFkcnuw_PLTaZYnimSeBQ2fzJgCLcBGAs/s640/CBA.jpg" width="640" height="346" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="1012">
 
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pwargent-M4siyDbqQY

Home loan arrears tracking lower at CommBank: Pete Wargent

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<h4>National Australia Bank is the latest lender to announce changes to help Australians impacted by COVID-19, dropping its Low Rate Classic Card by 100 basis points to 12.99%.</h4>
It also announced other support measures including waiving late payment fees and reducing the minimum monthly payments on all cards for the next three months.
NAB joins at least six other lenders that have announced support to credit card customers including the Commonwealth Bank. Westpac and ANZ have not announced specific measures for credit card customers.
Despite some lenders announcing credit card support, credit card holders are still the hardest hit as lenders hold onto rate cuts.
Since the GFC in 2008, the cash rate has fallen by 6.5 percentage points to 0.25%, while standard credit cards have increased by 1.37 percentage points on average, and low rate cards have increased by 1.22 percentage points (according to RBA data analysed by Finder).
While the cash rate has been falling since 2011, standard credit cards have increased on average by 0.25 percentage points, and low rate cards fell by just 0.26 percentage points. This is compared to the cash rate falling by 4.50 percentage points since November 2011.
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2020/4/6/Finder%201.png" alt="">
Bessie Hassan, Money Expert at Finder said, “While it’s great to see more help by our big banks and other lenders, it’s only a short term fix for a major debt issue in Australia."
“We currently have a combined $48.7 billion in credit card debt and this number is expected to rise as millions of Australians are being financially impacted by the coronavirus."
“The Finder app shows that Australians are spending more money using their credit cards while paying less of the balance off. This is a worrying trend. Short term relief is a great start but cardholders need to remember that it’s not free money and they will need to pay it back eventually."
“With insights from the Finder app also showing Australians have spent an extra $13.5 billion in March alone from panic-buying, now more than ever we need to control our spending."
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2020/4/6/Finder%202.png" alt="">
“If you do have credit card debt that you’re struggling to pay off, interest-free balance transfers could still be a better value option than relying on your lender’s relief package. Download the Finder app and it will work out how much you can potentially save with a balance transfer," Hassan concluded.
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j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

NAB the last of the big four to announce credit card support: Finder.com.au

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GUEST OBSERVER 
Credit &amp; debit card payments have overtaken cash as the most common way that purchases/transactions are made by Aussie consumers.  
Second jobs: In 2015/16 just over 763,000 people had secondary jobs. Administrative and support services accounted for 130,200 (17.1 per cent) secondary jobs, followed by Health care and social assistance with 114,300 (15.0 per cent) secondary jobs.  The Reserve Bank survey provides insights into consumer purchase activity. The Australian Bureau of Statistics provides detailed job market data that enable fresh insights into working hours and pay.  
What does it all mean?
Aussie consumers are relying more and more on credit &amp; debit cards and other payment methods like BPay to make their transactions. Today 52 per cent of all transactions are made with cards with cash accounting for 37 per cent of transactions. Three years ago cash led by 47 per cent to 43 per cent of payments. Cash now only leads card payments for transactions of less than $10.  
While Aussies like using cards for payments only around 10 per cent of respondents said they were interested in making payments with mobile devices like phones.  
The Consumer Payments Survey provides valuable information for businesses about why certain payment methods are preferred as well as trends in use.  
Growth in secondary jobs has surpassed the growth in main jobs for the past three years. The hard part is working out whether it is by choice or necessity. But the number with second jobs is broadly equal to the number of unemployed.  
The average worker received $61,029 in pay in 2015/16 but businesses paid $71,639 for every worker once costs like training, payroll tax and recruitment costs are factored in.  
What do the figures show?  Reserve Bank Payments survey
“The Reserve Bank's triennial Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) provides a detailed snapshot of how Australian consumers make payments. The 2016 CPS recorded information on around 17,000 day-to-day payments made by over 1,500 participants during a week. The data show that Australian consumers continued to switch from paper-based ways of making payments such as cash and cheques, towards digital payment methods (particularly debit and credit cards). Cards were the most frequently used means of payment in the 2016 survey, overtaking cash for the first time.”  
Included in the findings:
Around 27 per cent of all payments were made at food retailers followed by supermarket/bottle shop (26 per cent); goods retailers (18 per cent); medical/health, other (9 per cent); petrol stations (6 per cent); household bills (6 per cent)  
Around 64 per cent of the number of card payments were made by tap/wave over the card readers (47 per cent of the value)  
On average people take out money from an ATM less than once a fortnight (0.4 times a week)  
On average people have around $101 in their wallets (median value $40)  
Cash (37 per cent of all payments) still leads debit cards (30 per cent) and credit cards (22 per cent) 46 per cent of those aged 18-29 use debit cards whereas 51 per cent of those 65+ use cash for payments 86 per cent of all payments made in person with 11 per cent using PC/tablet 62 per cent of purchases (payments) less than $10 were made with cash
ABS Labour Account 2015/16
In 2015/16, total labour income increased by 3.8 per cent to $895.2 billion. This was driven by total compensation of employees, which increased by 3.1 per cent to $807.1 billion, while labour income from self-employment increased by 10.8 per cent to $88.1 billion.
The total number of hours actually worked increased 2.0 per cent to 20.2 billion hours. Hours sought but not worked, made up of hours sought by unemployed and additional hours sought by underemployed, decreased by 2.3 per cent to 1.9 billion hours.
The total number of employed persons increased by 2.6 per cent to 12.5 million. There were 730,600 unemployed persons in 2015/16, a decrease of 23,200 persons (3.1 per cent). At the same time, there were 1.1 million underemployed persons, an increase of 39,600 persons (3.8 per cent).
The total number of jobs in the Australian economy increased by 358,600 (or 2.8 per cent), made up of 16,700 job vacancies and 341,900 filled jobs. Job vacancies increased by 11.0 per cent from 152,800 to 169,500, while filled jobs increased by 2.7 per cent from 12.9 million to 13.2 million.
The number of main jobs grew by 2.6 per cent from 12.1 million in 2014/15 to 12.5 million in 2015/16. Over the same period, secondary jobs grew by 3.7 per cent from 735,900 in 2014/15 to 763,200 in 2015/16.
What is the importance of the economic data?
<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/images/2017/07/26/Screen%20Shot%202017-07-26%20at%2010.36.18%20AM.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2017/07/26/Screen%20Shot%202017-07-26%20at%2010.36.18%20AM.png" alt="">
The Reserve Bank surveys consumer payments every three years. The data is valuable for businesses as well  as policymakers.  
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) have compiled an experimental Labour Account that is designed to better assess trends in the economy and assist with calculations of economic growth and productivity.  What are the implications for interest rates and investors?  
Following the purchases made with cards may prove a better way of tracking spending across the economy.  
A raft of extra costs like payroll tax is hindering the ability of businesses to take on more staff.  
Craig James is the chief economist at <a href="https://www.comsec.com.au/default.aspx" target="_blank">CommSec</a>.
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cjames-5S2v74qSNK

Cards overtake cash for the first time: Craig James

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GUEST OBSERVER
Cash is no longer king. Well, certainly the physical version of cash is out of favour with Aussie consumers with more using cards for all variety of transactions.
The number of withdrawals from ATMs has hit a 15-year low while cash-out transactions with debit cards are falling at the fastest annual rate on record. Use of both credit and debit cards is soaring with more people using the cards for small purchases.
Aussie consumers aren’t short of funds on their credit cards. But only a third of credit card limits are being used on average and around 60 per cent of people pay off their credit card debt each month.
Credit cards are also being used more often – in fact smoothed transactions per account each month are at 13-year highs. No doubt the versatility of ‘tap and go’ has caused people to use cards more often for smaller transactions but credit card debt is still falling compared with a year ago at a time when wages are up near 2 percent.
<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/images/2017/03/14/Screen%20Shot%202017-03-14%20at%208.24.25%20AM.png" target="_blank" style="font-size: 12.16px;">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2017/03/14/Screen%20Shot%202017-03-14%20at%208.24.25%20AM.png" alt="">
In southern and eastern capital cities the petrol discounting cycle has lengthened. It now takes around a month for pump prices to ease from the cycle highs to the low point in the cycle. So motorists have fewer opportunities to fill up at the lows. Given that the gross retail margin is now averaging around 13 cents a litre, up from 10 cents a litre five years ago, it is even more important for motorists to shop around for the best prices. Adelaide motorists are getting the best deals at present with pump prices near $1.14 a litre.
What do the figures show?
Petrol prices
Due to a holiday in Canberra, the Australian Institute of Petroleum will release the weekly retail price report on Tuesday. The national average petrol price has eased 6.5 cents from recent highs.
The national average wholesale (terminal gate) unleaded petrol price stands at 114.7 cents a litre, down by 1.0 cent a litre over the week.The wholesale price has fallen 4.6 cents a litre from recent highs. The terminal gate diesel price stands at 114.9 cents a litre, down by 0.5 cents a litre over the previous week.
Last week the key Singapore gasoline price fell by US65 cents or 1.0 percent to a 3-month low of US$64.20 a barrel. In Australian dollar terms the Singapore gasoline price fell by 41 cents a barrel or 0.5 percent to a 3-month low of $85.35 a barrel or 53.7 cents a litre.
MotorMouth records the following retail prices for capital cities today: Sydney 121.2c; Melbourne 137.4c; Brisbane 120.1c; Adelaide 114.1c; Perth 122.1c; Canberra 138.3c; Darwin 138.5c; Hobart 141.6c.
Credit &amp; debit card lending:
The average credit card balance recorded a seasonal decline of $84.00 to $3,083.30 in January. Compared with a year ago, the average credit card balance was down by 0.4 percent. In smoothed terms (12 month average) the average balance was down by 1.3 percent.
Of credit cards attracting interest charges, the average outstanding balance rose by $54.80 in January to a 7-month high of $1,968.70. The average balance accruing interest was down by 2.1 per cent on a year ago. In smoothed terms (12 month average) the average balance was down by 0.2 per cent on a year ago.
The average credit card limit recorded a rise of $14.00 to $9,056.30 in January to be down 0.2 per cent over the year. Usage of credit card limits eased from 35 per cent to 34 per cent and therefore just above the lowest usage for over 14 years (33.9 per cent in October 2016).
On average, there were 13.2 transactions made per each credit card account in January, up from 11.3 transactions of a year ago. The average value of purchases was $126.93 with the rolling annual average of purchases falling to a 13-year low of $120.42 in January. Cash-out only transactions by debit cards were 9.1 per cent lower than a year ago – the biggest decline on record.
The number of ATM withdrawals in January was down by 7.7 per cent on a year ago to a 15-year low with the value down by 3.9 per cent. Transactions at own ATMs were down by 10.4 per cent on a year ago.
There were 15.3 debit card purchases per account in January, up from 11.8 transactions a year ago. Average purchase size was $49.97 with the annual average down from $51.37 to a record low of $51.20.
The number of debit cards stood at 44.55 million in January, down 0.3 per cent and the first monthly decline in 29 months. But accounts were up 6.6 per cent on a year ago. Credit card accounts stood at 16.7 million, up 1.6 per cent over the year – the slowest growth in two years.
<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/images/2017/03/14/Screen%20Shot%202017-03-14%20at%208.25.49%20AM.png" target="_blank" style="font-size: 12.16px;">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2017/03/14/Screen%20Shot%202017-03-14%20at%208.25.49%20AM.png" alt="">
What is the importance of the economic data?
Weekly figures on petrol prices are compiled by ORIMA Research on behalf of the Australian Institute of Petroleum (AIP). National average retail prices are calculated as the weighted average of each State/Territory's metropolitan and non-metropolitan retail petrol prices, with the weights based on the number of registered petrol vehicles in each of these regions. AIP data for retail petrol prices is based on available market data supplied by MotorMouth.
The Reserve Bank releases data on credit and debit card transactions each month. The credit card figures are useful in highlighting consumer borrowing and spending trends.
What are the implications for interest rates and investors?
The petrol price is going in the right direction for motorists, and in turn, retailers. World crude prices are near 3-month lows and the extra dollars saved at the petrol pump may serve to boost revenues of discretionary retailers.
The challenge for financial institutions is how to efficiently configure bricks-and-mortar branches. Retail customers can do most transactions digitally or remotely. And customers even aren’t coming in to branches to get cash, instead making transactions with cards more often.
CommSec expects no change to interest rates in the foreseeable future.
Craig James is the chief economist at <a href="https://www.comsec.com.au/default.aspx">CommSec</a>.
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