Briefs: Fair Finance fined, RBA to hold assets in China, and more
Social lender Foresters Community Finance Ltd (trading as Fair Finance Australia) has paid a A$6600 penalty for false or misleading advertising, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said. Fair Finance is funded by National Australia Bank and the Australian government's Community Development Finance Institutions pilot. In October 2012, Fair Finance advertised on its website that the effective annual interest rate on certain loans was 19.95 per cent, when the interest rate under the relevant credit contract was, in fact, 35 per cent, ASIC said. The Reserve Bank of Australia will hold around five per cent of Australia's foreign currency assets in China, the RBA's deputy governor, Philip Lowe, said in a speech in Shanghai on Wednesday. At present, Japan is the only Asian country used by the RBA for foreign currency reserves. Lowe said the People's Bank of China had approved an initial investment quota. Seventy branch managers working for National Australia Bank will be re-graded from "group one store managers" to group two. This will lift the rate of pay for the 70, who mostly work in Queensland, by five per cent, the Finance Sector Union said. Euronet Worldwide, the operator of the epay service, said it experienced an eighth quarter of declining pre-paid mobile sales in Australia in the March 2013 quarter. Sales were higher in New Zealand, however, thanks to the purchase of Ezi-Pay. The January 2013 acquisition of Sydney-based Pure Commerce "contributed marginally to revenue", said Euronet, and "adjusted EBITDA growth" for the a US-headquartered payments processor. The commercial services of Australia Post, including payments processing and agency banking, are subsidising the letters business and not the other way around, a review by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has found.