Australia’s Financial Regulatory Changes

Introductory Background

The financial institutions represent one of the major economical determinants of a country. Gondwe (2005) points out among the importance of financial institutions to include: enabling the growth of the capital market, enabling the growth of infrastructure and enhancing development of trade and trade partnerships with other economies, they also help to balance and control the economy. According to Carvalho and Carvalho (2015), through the application of fiscal and monetary policies, financial institutions are often regulated by different governments and governmental bodies in an attempt to maintain a countries economy or prevent occurrences such as inflation. As such the regulatory bodies for financial and banking services are bound to change from time to time. Some of these changes may be beneficial to banks while others may be quite detrimental to privately owned banks and as such management of these regulatory changes is a key strategy in enabling the success and continued operations of banks. This research aims to evaluate some of the regulatory changes to financial services within Australia highlighting how these changes impact the banking world as well as the stakeholders with a specific bias to the customers of these banking services.

Research Question

While banking services retain the ability to make their own internal decisions as regards the different strategies they take, part of their actions are greatly impacted by policies developed by governments and other financial institutions. In addition, membership to banking associations such as Australian Banking Associations, limits the monopoly in decision making for specific banks that are within the associations. According to AustralianBanking.Org (2019) the association which has a total of 23 member banks including Westpac and St Georges banks, works with the government and different regulators and other stakeholders to improve public awareness and understanding of the industries contribution to the economy as well as ensure theta the stakeholders, especially the customers continue to benefit from a stable competitive and accessible banking services. However different fiscal policies and financial changes are likely to impact this stability and greatly impact the banking world as well as the customers despite the intervention of the associations. The research aims to evaluate some of these potential changes as well as their possible impact tot the primary stakeholders that mainly include the consumers.

Aims and Objectives

The research aims to evaluate some of the regulatory changes to financial services within Australia highlighting how these changes impact the banking world as well as the stakeholders with a specific bias to the customers of these banking services. To be able to adequately and intrinsically dissect the research question and aim however, it was further broken down to specific objectives which will guide and provide a direction to the entire study. These include:

Aims

To evaluate the potential regulatory changes that have, and are likely to occur within the financial services for Australian Banking Association

To highlight some of the ways that these changes impact different banking services stakeholders, especially the customers

To investigate and propose ways in which these regulatory changes can be adequately managed by banks in order to ensure minimal impact to their operations and customers

Research Questions

What are some of the potential regulatory changes that have, and are likely to occur within the financial services offered by Australian Banking?

What are some of the ways that these regulatory changes impact different banking stakeholders, especially the customers?

What are some of the ways that these regulatory frameworks can be adequately managed by banks in order to minimize their impact to operations and stakeholders?

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Significance of the study

While regulatory changes are poised to occur quite often especially in the current era of globalization, banks are often caught unawares with these changes and as such leading to adverse impacts on the banks some to the extent of liquidation. Skinner (2019) in fact highlights that in the current world banking regulations change as frequently as every 12 minutes of operations. These changes may be minor and not even recognized by a wide range of bankers and customers however their extended impacts may be quite significant and impact a bank or its customers greatly (WorldBank, 2019). Moreover, with the current globalized economies a countries economy especially those housing a wide range of large Multi National Corporations are likely to be adversely affected by external factors other than internal given the vast impact of the MNCs. These impacts often trigger regulatory changes to financial institutions from the government which may significantly and adversely affect banks and by extension their customers. This study aims to highlight situations which may lead to the enforcement of such regulatory changes as well as the potential impact that these changes may have to the stakeholders with specific bias to the customers. As such the research can be able to help financial institutions better predict such changes as well as their impacts and device mechanisms to be able to manage them so as to minimize the impact and effect to the stakeholders and further maintain their operations.

Theoretical Framework and Methodology

The research majorly focuses on regulatory changes and their impact to banking services and customers, this highlights a wide range of qualitative rather than quantitative information and as such the research will adopt the qualitative research approach in the conduction of the primary study to further explore the regulatory changes and their impacts to banks and customers. The researcher will adopt the use of interviews among banking officials as well as customers in further dissecting the different kind of regulatory changes witnessed within the different banks they work in as well as how these changes have been impactful to the banks and their customers. Eventually the researcher with the use of this information and a thematic analysis approach will be able to highlight some key features including the type of regulatory changes often witnessed, their frequency of occurrence and their potential impacts. In addition this information will be able to enable the development of a framework capable of predicting any future regulatory changes and thus appropriately plan for their management.