Banking in Australia news

Banking in Australia is dominated by the big four major Australian banks:
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, The National Australia Bank, the Westpac
Banking Corporation and the Australia and New Zealand Bank, the ANZ. There are
other national banks such as St George Bank and Bendigo Bank, a community bank,
but generally the rest are state located banks, such as The Bank of Queensland
and BankWest, Bank of Western Australia.

The Federal Reserve Bank in Canberra, ACT is charged with the responsibility of
regulating the system and applying the reserve interest rate to deposits that the
banks must make in the Federal Reserve system. Whenever the country's inflation rate
increases, the Reserve Bank tends to increase the reserve rate. This causes increases
to be passed on to all borrowers of money, including home mortgage borrowers on variable
rates of interest. Some borrowers apply for a fixed rate when there is the future prospect
of large increases in interest rates.

International banks in Australia include Citibank, ING, HSBC, American Express and Banque
Nationale de Paris, as well as numerous other banks which entered the Australian financial
market after deregulation which I believe occurred in the 1990s.

There are also investment banks such as Macquarie Bank which is largely owned by Australian
shareholders. Some state banks started off as rural and industries investment banks and some
even started life as a building society or a credit union. These institutions tend to grow to
become equivalent to a bank and subject to the same general operating rules and regulations.
Australian people are fond of the small, work-based credit union such as the Police and Nurses'
Credit Union in Perth, Western Australia and the old PBS.. Perth Building Society which became
the Challenge Bank, later acquired by Westpac Banking Corporation.