The first round of substantive public hearings into misconduct in banking will be heard over two weeks, in Melbourne, from Tuesday, 13 March to Friday, 23 March 2018. The Commonwealth Law Courts at Flagstaff will be the venue. As foreshadowed last week, the first round of hearings "will focus on consumer lending practices within the context of credit products such as home loans, car loans and credit cards". Counsel assisting the commission, Rowena Orr, told the opening day of hearings last week that "a document indicating the scope of each round of public hearings will be released on the Commission's website before that round begins." All five of New Zealand's big banks have now ditched the NZ$1 "convenience fee" charged for using another bank's ATM. ANZ was the first mover, quickly followed by Westpac then ASB, Kiwibank, and BNZ. The change parallels the removal of these fees in Australia late last year and follows pressure from the Consumer NZ lobby group. ASIC has reported Australia's four major banks, along with AMP, have paid a further A$21.4 million in compensation to customers who suffered loss or detriment as a result of non-compliant conduct by financial advisers. This additional compensation brings the overall compensation total for matters covered by ASIC's March 2017 Report 515 ("Financial advice: Review of how large institutions oversee their advisers") to $51.4 million. The figures do not include compensation amounts paid by CBA under its other large-scale remediation programs and CBA's Open Advice Review Program. As at 31 January 2018, ASIC has publicly reported upon regulatory outcomes achieved in relation to 42 advisers. Late payment times for Australian businesses dropped to their lowest level on record in the final quarter of 2017, according to, illion (formerly Dun and Bradstreet). "During 2017 a combination of regulatory pressure, cashed up businesses, and fintech developments in invoicing and transaction clearing resulted in historically low late payment times across all industries," illion CEO Simon Bligh said. The report shows that the percentage of businesses paying their bills on time rose from 60 per cent to 68 per cent during the December quarter. The average late payment time for an Australian business was 11.9 days, down 18 per cent on the same period in 2016 and almost half from 2013. New Zealand's Heartland Bank is still keen to acquire UDC Finance from ANZ, Heartland's CFO David Mackrell told interest.co.nz. Mackrell said there was no sales process underway at the moment, but Heartland was just waiting "in the expectation" one would emerge. ANZ struck a deal to sell UDC to Chinese conglomerate HNA Group for NZ$660 million, but the sale was blocked by the Overseas Investment Office.