Briefs: Mint partners with Rewardle, Suncorp's new CEO named, new interest reference rate proposed

Banking Day staff
  • Digital customer engagement outfit Rewardle will integrate the "card present" application from mobile payments provider Mint. The two firms plan to create a single customer engagement, marketing and payment offering through combining Mint's payment software, terminal hardware and merchant acquiring services with Rewardle's Samsung Android tablets-based system. They will target the hospitality industry at first, and have agreed to share monthly fees, merchant services and transaction fees.

  • Suncorp Group has appointed Michael Cameron as its next group chief executive officer and managing director. Cameron is currently the CEO and managing director of GPT and also has been a non-executive director of Suncorp Group since April 2012. He will replace Patrick Snowball, who will step down after leading the listed company for six years. Cameron will start in October 2015.

  • The Group of 100 (the largest organisations in Australia) and the Actuaries Institute of Australia commissioned research that concluded the corporate bond market in Australia was "sufficiently observable, deep and liquid" to serve as a "transparent central reference point" for discounting employee benefit liabilities. The first set of "G100 discount rates" that meet Australian accounting standards will be made available in June 2015, based on May 2015 corporate bond rates. The catalyst for this effort has been the low government bond rates, which have pushed up corporate liabilities for defined benefit superannuation funds and long service leave, reducing profits and forcing companies to employ more capital to deal with a larger discounted present value of future payments.