Daily briefing - 01 November 2018

The Times of London today prints rumours of a deal on financial services between the EU and the UK post-Brexit, which are repeated in several other outlets. "British and European negotiators have reached tentative agreement on all aspects of a future partnership on services, as well as the exchange of data, government sources said," writes Oliver Wright. Do take note of the word "tentative" as reports of an agreement are very unlikely to be true, considering that any agreement on financial services has been relegated to the second phase of talks, which only commence after the first phase is finished. UK officials are still trying to wrap their heads around the Irish border issue, which is being held up as the last item to be solved before moving on to phase two. Given that the UK appears to have consistently misunderstood and misjudged the willingness of EU officials to compromise on major issues, this appears on face value to be a further attempt to muddy the waters.

Two weeks after the Lafferty Banking 500 pointed to deep-seated problems at Australian banks, the banks are preparing their customers for more provisions against past misdeeds. "National Australia Bank on Tuesday joined Westpac Banking Corp and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd in announcing new provisions associated with the costs of cleaning-up years of bad behaviour. All three banks are putting more money aside for remediation including compensating wealth customers who were charged fees for services they didn't receive." CBA, which has already reported results, had a drop in profits for the first time in nine years.

The US Federal Reserve is proposing different rules for mid-sized US commercial lenders that do not have deep Wall Street exposure, which will result in four tiers of regulation for banks with assets of $700 million or more. "Under the Fed proposal, midsized lenders including U.S. Bancorp, Capital One Financial Corp, PNC Financial Corp and Charles Schwab Corp would face lower liquidity and compliance requirements, and smaller banks would get even easier treatment. The proposal stems from a law Congress passed in May that ordered the Fed to reduce regulatory burdens on community and regional lenders."

Morgan Stanley says cryptocurrencies are now an institutional asset class

LAFFERTY BENCHMARKING

Capital One and US Bancorp received three stars each in the Lafferty Banking 500. The maximum score is five stars.