Weekly Wrap: Keeping up with the changes

Looking back over the past week one of the themes, other than the ongoing economic meltdown, has been the confirmation of change on the industry. For sometime now we have been reporting that PIS was about to buy the Newpark risk adviser group (A real good clue was seeing the boss of Newpark at the PIS conference a month ago).

Friday, October 10th 2008, 4:30PM

The other change was confirmation that Suncorp’s assets, including those in New Zealand, could well change hands. We noted this somet ime ago, but were firmly told that was not the case. This week Queensland-based Suncorp announced that asset sales were on the agenda.

Time will tell whether any of the New Zealand businesses will be sold. No doubt there is plenty of speculation around.

On a completely different note today’s story is about a legal fight between Money Managers and one of its former franchise owners, who among other things, claims ownership of the MM brand. It’s a good read and can be found here.

In our Insurance news section this week, besides the Newpark story, we have one of the other risk adviser groups appointing a new national manager, plus the latest Opinion piece from Russell Hutchinson, Are you on the right plan? and a story about how young people are being encouraged to become insurance advisers.

It seems every week there is more change in the home loan market and that it is getting much harder for people to get finance. The Mortgage Centre this week has a story on how High risk borrowers are running into problems with finance and about Sovereign axing its lo-doc lending. Also worth a read is this week’s Home Loan Report.

Amongst our People and appointment news this week AMP Capital has announced who is taking over as head of investment strategy.

Our Deposit Rate news this week includes SBS getting its banking licence and Dominion Finance cancelling its annual meeting.

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