Marketplace lender DirectMoney, which has had difficulty raising funds to support its lending operations, has brought an experienced funds management industry executive onto its board. John Nantes has been appointed a non-executive director, effective immediately. Nantes is the chief portfolio officer for Adcock Group and before that was group head of financial services at Crowe Horwath. DirectMoney executive chairman Stephen Porges said in a statement: "John's guidance will greatly assist the company as we establish the DirectMoney Personal Loan Fund as the preferred investment for Australian retail and high net worth investors looking to gain exposure to the unsecured personal loan asset class." ME has joined other lenders in restricting the use of foreign income to service mortgages, Mortgage Business reports. ME said it was concerned about its ability to verify foreign income. Other lenders that have imposed similar restrictions in recent months include AMP Bank, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Citibank and all four big banks. ING Direct Australia's new chief executive Uday Sareen, whose appointment was announced in January, took up his position at the bank last week, following the departure of long-serving CEO Vaughn Richtor. Sareen started his banking career with Citigroup in 1994 before moving to ING Group in 2007 to become country head for retail banking at ING Vysya in India. In 2012 he was appointed chief strategy officer at ING-DiBa in Germany. He returned to India in 2014, where he had a couple of senior roles. As was widely tipped, the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia opted to keep official cash rate on hold at 1.75 per cent yesterday. This means it's not likely to consider cutting again - if indeed the next rate change is down - until August, suggested pundits like Craig James, chief economist at CBA's CommSec. "We expect the Reserve Bank to stay on the interest rate sidelines until August. At the August meeting the Reserve Bank will have digested the latest inflation data (released end July) as well as the Brexit decision in the UK and the June and July rate decisions in the US," James said. Moody's Investors Service has assigned its provisional P-1 (sf) ratings to a single tranche of US dollar denominated notes, secured by a portfolio of Australian non-conforming residential mortgages that are being serviced by Pepper Group Limited. These notes, totalling US$133 million, are being issued to fund the difference between the stated amount of the initial Class A1-u1 Notes and the balance of the redemption fund for these notes, Moody's disclosed in a presale media release. As at 31 May 2016, the majority (52.1 per cent) of the portfolio consisted of loans extended to borrowers with impaired credit histories, or made on a limited documentation basis (38 per cent). Moody's Investors Service covered bond program Q1 2016 performance overview for five New Zealand covered bond issuers are all at Aa2(cr) with a stable outlook, except for Kiwibank, the agency said. On 7 April 2016, Moody's placed Kiwibank Limited's counterparty risk