insto - Australian financial markets

In what is a first for the Australian life insurance and wealth management industry, Aviva will utilise the voice biometrics to transform the way it interacts with its customers and advisors. Simply by using the unique characteristics of the member’s voice, the identity of callers to Aviva can be quickly verified and the call routed to the most appropriate resource. The firms involve contend that this will raise the level of customer service and convenience, while providing an added layer of security and privacy to telephone enquiries and transactions.

A new guide to corporate responsibility reporting will transform the way the property sector records its performance, according to the Property Council of Australia. The publication, A Guide to Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the Property Sector, is the only property-specific template available anywhere in the world.

Peter Verwer, the Property Council’s chief executive, said: “This guide will revolutionise corporate responsibility (CR) reporting in our industry, and ensure non-financial performance is transparent, meaningful and comparable.”

The US government is charging Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, and two other company executives with civil fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission said last Thursday, 4 June (US time) that its case also accused Mozilo of illegal insider trading.

Ratings agency Moody's says it continues to have a negative outlook for Australia's real-estate investment trust (A-REIT), or property trust, sector.

Westpac has delivered the last of Australia’s major banks’ half year results. Against a backdrop of deteriorating economic conditions, scarcity of capital and rising unemployment these are a creditable set of half-year earnings. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the majors achieved underlying cash earnings of $8.4 billion – a 6 per cent reduction over the prior corresponding period.

That’s the good news.

The increasing amount of overlap and duplication of data, tasks and processes in their anti-fraud and anti-money laundering divisions is driving banks to seek synergies between compliance, risk management and security, reveals a new report by independent market analysis firm Datamonitor.