A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; wage subsidy extended, ANZ apology, PwC challenged, debt servicing easier, household net wealth falls, swaps stable, NZD up, & more

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
Bank of China launched the new market low home loan rate today of just 2.55%. More here.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
No more cuts announced today.

EXTENDED WAGE SUBSIDY CRITERIA WIDENED
Businesses now need to have suffered a smaller revenue decline to be eligible for the extended wage subsidy, but this fall needs to have occurred in a more specific time period. Businesses have more time to apply for an interest free IRD loan.

ANZ SOLD USELESS PRODUCT
ANZ NZ is 'very sorry' as the FMA takes it to court for allegedly charging some customers for credit card repayment insurance policies that offered those customers no cover. The FMA didn't know about the issue until ANZ dobbed themselves in. ANZ didn't declare the breach in the 2018 2019 Conduct & Culture review.

TAKING ON THE BIG BOYS
The Australian Tax Office is taking PwC to court over it's work constructing shields for large MNCs for their obligations to pay income tax in the country. The ATO also claims PwC is using legal professional privilege to withhold facts or evidence or to make false and misleading statements that could conceal fraud or lead to tax evasion. The ATO has found only 40% of big businesses were paying the correct amount of tax, compared to 90% of individuals.

EASIEST DEBT SERVICING EVER
Household debt servicing loads fell to their lowest levels ever at the end of March 2020, down to 7.1% of disposable household incomes, according to the RBNZ's C21 data.

BIGGEST HOUSEHOLD NET WEALTH FALL EVER
The RBNZ household balance sheet tracking shows that household net wealth fell -$10.5 bln in Q1-2020 from Q4-2019, the largest single quarterly retreat on record. (The largest quarterly GFC fall was -$7 bln.) Financial assets fell -$7.9 bln while financial liabilities rose +$2.6 bln. You should note that financial assets do not include housing or housing rental investments. They do include bank deposits, equity and investment fund shares, and superannuation (including KiwiSaver). But household liabilities do include housing loans - in fact those make up the biggest portion of them. Household financial net wealth slipped from just over $1 tln to just on $993 bln as at the end on March. Given bank balance activity and share market pricing, it is unlikely the net financial wealth has fallen further in Q2-2020 so far.

BAD ADVICE?
The Financial Markets Authority has issued a formal warning to a financial adviser who sent an email to clients that they urgently move their investments to ‘low risk’ funds in the wake of COVID-19. The Head of Supervision at the FMA said the advice was inappropriate and had the potential for significant harm. The fault is said to be that ‘class’ financial advice has limitations and may not be appropriate for all clients.

LOCAL UPDATE
There were zero new Covid-19 cases again today in New Zealand, so now only the same one person is left with it in the whole country. We are now at fourteen days with zero new cases.

AUSTRALIA UPDATE
In Australia, there have been 7247 cases (+7 since this time yesterday), 102 deaths (unchanged) and a recovery rate of just under 92% (unchanged). 25 people are in hospital there (unchanged) with 5 in ICU (unchanged). There are now 505 active cases in Australia (+7).

GLOBAL UPDATE
The latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 6,601,300 which is rising at much faster pace than recently. American cases rose by +21,000 since this time yesterday to 1,872,600. US deaths now exceed 108,000. Global deaths now exceed 390,000. It is starting to get very ugly indeed in many emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, (the UK), Iran, India, Mexico and Chile.

EQUITY MARKET UPDATES
The S&P500 slipped -0.3% earlier today. If it stays like that in tomorrow's Friday session it will have a weekly gain of +2.3%. Frankfurt ended last night's session down nearly -0.5% and is heading for a +7.3% gain for the week. London ended last night down -0.6%, heading for a weekly +4.6% gain. In Shanghai today, they have opened flat, as had Hong Kong. Tokyo is down -0.3% so far today in early trade. Locally, the ASX200 is down -0.3% and heading for a +9.0% weekly gain. The NZX50 Capital Index is down -0.7% so far today, heading for a +2.4% weekly gain.

SWAP RATES UPDATE
Swap rates may have changed little today, with any firmness at the long end. We don't have wholesale swap rates movement details yet but we will update this later in the day if they show a significant movement. The 90-day bank bill rate is still unchanged at 0.26%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is up another +6 bps to 1.07%. The China Govt 10yr is up +8 bps to 2.89%. And the NZ Govt 10yr yield is up to 0.95% and is pushing higher in offshore trade. The UST 10yr is up another +7 bps since this time yesterday to 0.81%

NZ DOLLAR FIRM
The Kiwi dollar has continued to rise, up +½c today, to now just on 64.7. Against the Aussie we are also firm but less, now at 93.1 AUc. Against the euro we are holding at 57.1 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is up at 69.4.

BITCOIN FIRMS
The price of Bitcoin is marginally firmer from this this time yesterday at US$9,781, a small (for bitcoin) +1.1% rise. The bitcoin price is charted in the currency set below.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».