The path to Project Darwin : the evolution of the AMP's organisational structure

Demutualisation became a global trend amongst financial sector firms in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Changes to the organisational foundations of mutual firms represented a shift in operational cultures and have often been viewed as an end point or demise of the co-operative business model. It is the intention of this article to investigate the extent to which this was the case within a major mutual institution, the Australian Mutual Provident, Australia's oldest and largest mutual insurer. The article's key argument is that the concept of mutuality is organic, and that within this organisation it evolved as the structure of the firm became more sophisticated as it developed from a supplier of life insurance products into a sophisticated financial services provider, which ultimately generated internal pressures to demutualise.

Firm characteristics and information risk

Following the work of Easley et al. (2002) in documenting the effect of private information on cross-sectional stock returns, we examine the relationship between a firm’s fundamental characteristics and its probability of information-based trading (PIN). We find that asset turnover and dividend yields are important firm characteristics that influence a firm’s PIN. The findings also offer an alternative explanation as to why firm characteristics are informative about asset prices.

The 2012 Revised FATF Recommendations: Assessing and Mitigating Mobile Money Integrity Risks Within the New Standards Framework

Mobile money holds great financial inclusion promise, but also poses financial integrity challenges. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)—the intergovernmental global anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) standard-setting body—expressed support for financial inclusion and mobile money as a means to decrease the use of non-transparent cash in many developing countries. In February 2012, FATF adopted a new revised set of standards. This Article considers the impact of these new standards on mobile money models in developing countries. It highlights aspects of the new standards that would facilitate innovative mobile money models, but also points to questions and challenges. The new standards are generally more facilitative of new financial services models for the unbanked and underbanked, but a number of key questions and implementation challenges remain. These include mobile money-related privacy and cyber-crime concerns.

Response rates in Australian market research

RICA commissioned Deakin University to “establish whether response rates are in decline in the Australian market research industry and to identify, as far as possible, the reasons for these declines if they exist. This is likely to involve a review of previous research, a literature review and collection of data on response rates provided on a confidential basis and with the assistance of AMSRO to facilitate data provision.”

Attempts were made to contact all listed market research companies in Australia, including all major internet panel companies. While industry co-operation was not high with the study, sufficient data was provided to depict current response rates and to show how they had declined over time. Because of the low contactability issues, this Report proposes the use of better methods to compute the reliability of survey estimates by taking account of past survey results.

The literature review revealed a wealth of recent studies, with the main emphasis being on studies of telephone and internet surveys. This review of the research produced 34 evidence-based guidelines for social researchers. While some of these reflect current practice, the emergence of the internet as the main survey method raises a number of disclosure and sampling issues. Esomar (2012) has produced 28 issues to be raised with providers, which sets the basis for good industry practice. This suggests an opportunity for the industry to adopt these standards as its own and to conduct training courses for major clients and suppliers. There are many panel providers, some of whom are not AMSRO members. AMSRO may need to examine what role it can play in mandating or encouraging adherence to these standards as a way of promoting the industry.

Talks with key industry people, as well as the literature, have revealed the importance of blended surveys, where multiple contact and response mechanisms are used. Particularly where an internet panel is used as one source, this poses representativeness and weighting issues which are difficult to resolve. The Report recommends that where blended survey methods are used, measures be taken to measure contactability in the other contact media, along with more sophisticated weighting schemes. The industry should examine its training courses to ensure that industry expertise keeps pace with these developments.
Summary of Results

The results focus on two main collection methods – the telephone and the internet. As far as the telephone is concerned response rates have been in a gradual decline the last decade. This outcome is hard to detect because the data show considerable fluctuations from one survey wave to the next. Among cold-calling surveys, telephone response rates are typically below 10%, for a range of topics and survey types. Co-operation rates, (the ratio of obtained interviews to refusals) are typically below 0.2 (that is below one interview to five refusals). Telephone interviews with clients have a higher response rate – typically above 20% with co-operation rates above 1.0. It would appear that some topics, such as financial services, may induce a lower level of co-operation. Government sponsored surveys have higher response rates, at times over 50%, but even here a sharp decline in response rates over time for one long running monitor was observed. Co-operation rates were also higher in government sponsored surveys.

One long data series from a telephone omnibus suggested that the “Do Not Call Register” which began in May, 2007 had some positive effects for the industry. Initially there was a spike in both response rates and co-operation. Although this was relatively short-lived, response rates thereafter declined more slowly and co-operation rates were somewhat higher and remained stable. These conclusions should be regarded as tentative as more data series would really be necessary to see if similar trends occurred elsewhere.

As far as the internet is concerned, panel response rates are around the 20% mark and appear to be relatively stable over the last few years. In this case, the gross response rate is the number of interviews divided by the number of invitations sent. As the number of invitations may be a function of the need to fill a survey quickly, it should be considered a gross indicator of response. In order to capture this phenomenon, a further measure has been devised, termed the “attempt rate” which measures the percentage of people who attempt to participate once sent the invitation. The available data suggests that it is relatively stable. However, it is also somewhat susceptible to the time the survey was left open. Finally, a co-operation rate was also calculated. It measures the ratio of completed to terminated interviews, typically at least five interviews to each termination, but often much higher. This measure is not directly comparable with the co-operation rate in telephone surveys because it cannot take account of the number of eligible people on the panel who open the invitation, see the company doing the survey or its length and decide not to take the survey. For internet client studies, response rates were typically somewhat higher than shown for the panels, but there was marked variability.

There was only one study provided of intercept interviews. It showed response rates of over 60% and co-operation rates of nearly 2 interviews per refusal. A strength and a weakness of intercept interviewing is the ability to be selective in who is asked to participate. As for mail, one government sponsored mail survey from 2010 is reported, with a response rate over 50%. The previous review contains more data, as mail appears to be infrequently used within the industry for commercial surveys.

While surveys remain a major and highly effective tool for the industry and its clients, issues with contactability and co-operation mean that even closer attention is needed to survey design, sampling, weighting and analysis than was previously the case.

Basel risk weights, asset correlations, and book-to-market equity: evidence from Asian countries

We examine the effect of firm book-to-market equity values (BE/ME) on asset correlations which play an important role in determining risk weights under the current Basel capital requirements. Using firms in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan over a sample period from 1988 to 2013, we find that BE/ME has a negative effect on asset correlations. This suggests a role for BE/ME as an additional factor in determining asset correlations, and thus risk weights, also potentially reducing incentives for regulatory capital arbitrage.

A reconstrução do marco regulatório do sistema financeiro do Brasil: os mercados de capitais, de seguros e previdência privada

The major objective of this paper is to identify, in the light of economic theory and of recent Brazilian and foreign institutional experiences, the best alternative for the reform of the regulatory framework of the domestic financial system, encompassing capital markets, insurance and private complementary social welfare. This paper is divided into four sections: in the first part, we identify the changes in the international and domestic financial systems, currently in an accelerated process of integration (search for similar rules and standards) and convergence (leveling of operational procedures). Next, we evaluate the potential impact of this new environment upon Brazilian economic development. In the second part, we analyze the concept of financial markets efficiency, where a contractualist view of the relationship involving suppliers and consumers of financial services is exposed. We also identify the major differences of focus among the several trends of regulation of the capital markets, insurance and private complementary social welfare In the third part, we present the concepts and the functions of a typical regulatory agency and alternative models of market regulation. In particular, we explore the differences between a regulatory model in which there are several regulatory agencies, each acting in segmented markets, as opposed to one in which there is single agency that regulates, supervises and oversees ali the indicated markets. In the forth and last part, we analyze the Brazilian case, attempting to identify, in the view of economic theory and recent experiences in other countries of the world, the best alternative for reforming present legislation. The basic recommended conclusion is to undertake studies that lead to the establishment of a single regulatory agency, congregating the functions currently performed by the Brazilian Securities Commission (CVM), the Superintendency of Private Insurance (Susep) and the Secretariai of Complementary Welfare (SPC).

Uso da web nos serviços financeiros

As empresas do setor financeiro têm, desde há muito, estado entre as que mais investem em tecnologia de informação para apoiar os seus processos de negócio, buscar a eficiência empresarial e melhorar a qualidade dos seus serviços. Investimentos na Web estão contribuindo para a evolução dos serviços financeiros on-line, os quais podem ser classificados em três categorias: divulgação de informações, transações e relacionamento com os clientes. Este trabalho descreve pesquisa sobre a difusão do uso da Internet nos serviços bancários e entre as corretoras on-line no Brasil, comparando os dados recém obtidos com estudos desenvolvidos desde 1997 pelo autor.

A Teoria de segmentação face à satisfação do consumidor de serviços bancários: um estudo de caso em um banco de varejo

There is a intensity change within financial services industry: deregulation, technology, joint ventures and, in Brazil, privatization, increase of foreign competitors and fall of industry participating from 31 per cent to 5,4 per cent in Brazilian GDP.In this context financial institutions are working very hard to improve their market share, besides promoting customer retention and creating customer loyalty.In this paper we are presenting the scenario of industry in the 90's, opportunity to use segmentation and relationship strategies used by banks through distribution channels.The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and segmentation. To ascertain whether such a link exists, a primary study of 3.378 individuals was conducted in two branches at Rio de Janeiro in March 2001. The results suggest that there is little relationship between customer satisfaction and segmentation, besides other qualitative findings.

O impacto das práticas ITIL na flexibilidade organizacional - evidências empíricas em uma empresa multinacional de TI

The present work has as main objective the identification and impact analysis for the practice ITIL in the organizational flexibility of a multinational IT company, being this study of quali-quantitative and exploratory nature. To achieve this objective, some theoretical studies on bureaucracy, organization flexibility, control, IT governance and ITIL were done, as a form to better understand the research problem. For analysis effect a set of eleven ITIL process was considered in this research ¿ service desk, incident management, problem management, change management, configuration management, release management, service level management, availability management, capacity management, continuity management and finally IT financial services management ¿ grouped in its two core areas ¿ service support and service delivery. Then a scale was constructed and validated, on the basis of theoretical models developed by Volberda (1997), Tenório (2002) and Golden and Powell (1999), to measure the flexibility related to each process comprising the ITIL core. The dimensions adopted to measure flexibility were: organization design task, managerial task, IT impact on work force, HR management, efficiency impact, sensitivity, versatility and robustness. The instrument used in research was a semi-structured interview, which was divided in two parts. The data collection was performed with ten interviewed people from an IT multinational company, based on convenience, some were managers and there were users, some were ITIL certified and others not. The statistic tests of t student and Wilcoxon non-parametric were adopted. The result of the research indicated that the ITIL service support area, for possessing greater operational focus, presents flexibility trend. The opposite was found for the service delivery area, which has greater tactical focus. The results also suggest that the change management discipline was the one that contributed for the most flexibility inside the company, followed by incident management discipline and the service desk function.

Welfare characterization of monetary-applied models and three implications

This paper demonstrates that the applied monetary models - the Sidrauski-type models and the cash-in-advance models, augmented with a banking sector that supplies money substitutes services - imply trajectories which are Pareto-Optimum restricted to a given path of the real quantity of money. As a consequence, three results follow: First, Bailey’s formula to evaluate the welfare cost of inflation is indeed accurate, if the longrun capital stock does not depend on the inflation rate and if the compensate demand is considered. Second, the relevant money demand concept for this issue - the impact of inflation on welfare - is the monetary base. Third, if the long-run capital stock depends on the inflation rate, this dependence has a second-order impact on welfare, and, conceptually, it is not a distortion from the social point of view. These three implications moderate some evaluations of the welfare cost of the perfect predicted inflation.

Correspondentes bancários como canal de distribuição de serviços financeiros: taxonomia, histórico, limites e pontencialidades dos modelos de gestão de redes

Adminsitração, análise e tecnologia da informação

Economia solidária, microfinanças e pluralismo jurídico: um estudo de caso sobre a Rede Brasileira de Bancos Comunitários de Desenvolvimento

Em 1998, a partir da iniciativa da Associação de Moradores do Conjunto Palmeira (ASMOCONP), foi fundado na periferia de Fortaleza o Banco Palmas, com a função de estimular a produção e o consumo no bairro, a fim de reorganizar e fortalecer o desenvolvimento da economia local. Iniciou-se, assim, a experiência com os bancos comunitários de desenvolvimento no país, que hoje já são mais de 100 distribuídos em 19 estados da federação, em comunidades de baixa renda e baixo Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano (IDH). Trata-se de iniciativas sem fins lucrativos, integralmente geridas pelos membros da comunidade em que atuam, que oferecem serviços financeiros aos moradores do bairro, informadas pelos princípios da economia solidária, com o objetivo de gerar trabalho e renda. Para tanto, utilizam-se de mecanismos como o microcrédito e a emissão de uma moeda social circulante local, paralela ao Real. Os bancos comunitários de desenvolvimento geralmente não possuem organização jurídica formal. São projetos de microfinanças criados no âmbito de ONGs. Valem-se, portanto, do marco normativo do terceiro setor e não são submetidos à regulação financeira. Utilizando o método do estudo de caso, o presente trabalho busca descrever o fenômeno do surgimento e da multiplicação de bancos comunitários de desenvolvimento pelo país, esclarecendo como esses bancos criaram normas próprias para regular as suas atividades, como essa ordem normativa funciona e como ela se relaciona com o direito estatal brasileiro. Para uma melhor compreensão dessa complexa realidade normativa, algumas ideias e conceitos desenvolvidos em outras ciências sociais são utilizados. Com isso, o presente estudo busca evidenciar os limites da regulação financeira e discutir as políticas de inclusão financeira e de economia solidária que vêm sendo implementadas recentemente pelo Poder Público no Brasil.