Veda has taken management control of GetCreditScore.com.au, appointing one of its executives, David Scognamiglio, as managing director. GetCreditScore was launched last year as a joint venture between Veda and SocietyOne, offering free credit scores to consumers, and Veda acquired a majority stake in July this year. It said in a statement that the appointment of Scognamiglio demonstrated its commitment to improving financial literacy levels. ANZ has received approval from the Central Bank of Myanmar to open a branch in the country's largest city, Yangon. The bank said in a statement that it would use the branch to connect global customers to growth opportunities in the region. ANZ received a full banking licence in Thailand in June and claims to be one of a handful of international banks with a presence in all five Greater Mekong countries. National Australia Bank and Commonwealth Bank are among 22 banks now collaborating on a "partnership to design and apply distributed ledger technologies to global financial markets." Wall Street fintech firm R3, founded by a former head of FX broker Icap, is coordinating this alliance. According to R3, the project will also "seek to establish consistent standards and protocols for the technology in order to facilitate broader adoption and gain a network effect." New Zealand's biggest discount department store chain, The Warehouse Group, announced it had bought out Westpac NZ's share of their financial services joint venture formed in 2001. The Warehouse said it bought Westpac's share for net assets plus NZ$6.5 million and the venture's NZ$57 million loan book would be added to The Warehouse's in-house financial services business. New York-based York Capital Management has emerged as an equity partner in Pepper Group's consortium for the Esanda Dealer Finance auction, according to the AFR's Street Talk. Pepper has assembled a consortium including equity partners and senior debt and mezzanine lenders, after a late entry to the Esanda race. The AFR notes that Pepper has partnered with York before, buying a 12 per cent stake in Hong Kong and southern China lenders PrimeCredit Limited and Shenzhen PrimeCredit in May, and that York is also Pepper shareholder. In a just-released report on the financial outlook for Australia, the IMF concluded that while it supported the recommendations of the Financial System Inquiry, that sound and profitable banks today need are sound and profitable at the moment, significantly higher capital would be needed in a severe adverse scenario to ensure a fully-functioning system. Accordingly, the IMF's directors welcomed the Australian regulators' commitment to make banks' capital "unquestionably strong" over time. To address risks in the housing market, [the IMF] supported targeted action by the regulator(s). They cautioned "if investor lending and house price inflation do not slow appreciably, these policies may need to be intensified". The Reserve Bank of New Zealand announced it had extended its deadline for submissions on its consultation into its outsourcing policy for banks by a month to December 4. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand published its annual report, including