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Financial services sector feels the buzz of disruption in Australia

Financial services sector feels the buzz of disruption in Australia

If Australia has been a hotbed of disruption, across all industries, the financial services sector has been the hot water bottle in the hotbed. From the days when the likes of Pepper, Wizard, Aussie Home Loans and Liberty Financial first began to offer alternative sources of home loans to the major banks, through the emergence of alternative payment systems such as PayPal, to the attack by the likes of OzForex and Pepperstone on the banks' foreign exchange business, to the savaging of the traditional full-service stockbrokers' lucrative client relationships by online brokers, through to the Australian Securities Exchange itself having its stock-trading monopoly disrupted by the broker-owned Chi-X, the financial services sector has buzzed with the hum of disruption.Disruption has reached into virtually every area of the industry – and anywhere it has not yet been felt is merely a matter of "watch this space."Nothing stands still: the disrupted become disruptors, and vice versa. While fighting Chi-X in one area of its business, the ASX launched the mFund Settlement Service to disrupt the financial advice industry. mFunds allow any consumer to buy and sell managed funds directly on the ASX in the same way and for the same cost as they buy and sell shares, without having to use a financial planner or a platform.

Policy & Regulation