Moody's Investors Service, in its half-yearly report on Australian mortgage delinquencies, said it expected this metric to increase "moderately" through 2018 on softer housing market conditions. This reverses a decline in home loan arrears over the year to November 2017. The proportion of Australian residential mortgages that were more than 30 days in arrears (30-plus delinquency rate) was 1.45 per cent in November 2017, compared with 1.52 per cent in November 2016. Delinquencies declined in all states except New South Wales over the year. Delinquency rates were lower in capital cities than other regions of each state or territory. Moody's expected rates to increase moderately through 2018. A New Zealander with convictions for multi-million dollar frauds has allegedly moved to Australia and is attracting the attention of ASIC, the NZ Herald reports. Shaun Gregory Morgan has served time in Switzerland for a US$30 million fraud and in Utah for setting up a fake bank. The paper reports he is apparently now in Sydney and using the name Shaun J. Munroe, claiming to be the CEO of 'Australian Capital Investments Group'. It reports that a Sydney property developer says "Munroe" offered to arrange mezzanine finance for a property development "cheaper than what banks are offering" for a A$375,000 upfront fee. It's business as usual at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand despite a revised mandate and new policy targets agreement with the new Labour-led coalition government, and a new governor. In a speech delivered in Sydney by RBNZ economics advisor Rebecca Williams (but credited to long-time assistant governor John McDermott) the central bank said the introduction of an employment target into its mandate wouldn't change much. As well as keeping inflation within a set band, the RBNZ will also have a target of achieving "maximum sustainable employment". McDermott said the bank had always had regard to the labour market when making OCR decisions and this has been "encouraged by our increasingly flexible approach" in recent years. Therefore, he said, he saw the inclusion of the target "as reinforcing the flexibility of inflation targeting" and "to a large extent, the changes are a way of ensuring that the flexibility in our approach continues".