A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; Co-op Bank cuts rates, eyes on dairy auction, log prices rising, ANZ faces more scrutiny, few AFAs, swaps up, NZD down

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
The Co-operative Bank has cut its term deposit rates by -5 bps for terms of 18 months, 2 years, and 3 years.

DAIRY PRICE OUTLOOK
There is another dairy auction tomorrow morning and the derivatives markets are signaling no change for WMP prices, but an impressive +6% rise for SMP. Those two commodities will cover more than three quarters of all product offered. The last auction on May 2 brough a small -1.1% price decline on 19,508 tonnes sold. Here is a link to the dairy payout.

RISING DEMAND, RISING PRICES
The PFOlsen May log report shows that demand of this crop is rising, for virtually all grades, and by both export and domestic users. Prices are rising. We have an updated table of the price histories for all main grades, and we have that charted here.

MORE PROBLEMS FOR ANZ
ANZ and its CEO, Kiwi Shane Elliott, are deep in the middle of the Australian Royal Commission into financial services. But the recent change of government in Malaysia may draw them into a high-profile investigation there. It owns 25% of AmBank which was  the banker to the previous Malaysian prime minister who has been accussed of massive corruption. ANZ has been trying to sell its stake for years, without success. To progress that, ANZ had outsized representation on the AmBank board during the time the alleged money laundering took place, according to a story in the AFR.

STUNTED CREDIT, LOWER HOUSE PRICES
That Aussie Royal Commission will have consequences, some unintended and that is exercising the minds of the RBA. In a speech today, a deputy Governor flagged a tightening in lending standards which could have more impact on house prices than any other factor.

FMA TAKES 2ND CASE AGAINST COMPANY & NZ DIRECTOR FOR ALLEGED MISUSE OF FSPR
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has filed criminal charges against a second company and its New Zealand based director for allegedly claiming to still be registered on the Financial Service Providers Register after it had been deregistered and despite subsequent warnings. The company faces two charges with a maximum fine of $300,000 each. The director faces a maximum penalty of either a $100,000 fine and/or one year imprisonment. The charges have been filed in the Wellington District Court. Neither the company nor director have been named to allow the director to seek name suppression should they choose to do so. (Here's our write up on the first case).

A HANDFUL OF AFAs
The FMA has released a profile of the authorised financial advisers in New Zealand. Across the whole country, there are only 1772 of them, or one for every 2100 adults in the country. There are only 207 who are under 35 years of age, there are 110 over 65 years. 76% are male. The lack of qualified advisers (80 joined last year, 110 left the ranks) is why robo-advice may be the only source for personal financial advice in the future. (And all of that may be conflicted because it will be supplied by companies offering their own services).

DASHBOARD NEAR
The Reserve Bank says it plans to officially launch its Dashboard bank disclosure tool at its May 30 Financial Stability Report press conference.

PEAK KIWI?
Aussies are not visiting New Zealand as much, preferring Asian destinations more. They visited the USA -2% less in the year to March, and New Zealand -3% less. But we are still far and away their single most visited destination with more than 130,000 visits in March. The next largest was Indonesia (or rather, Bali), with over 90,000 visits.

CHINA GROWTH HOLDING
In China, new data out today shows that industrial production rose more than expected in April, but retail sales growth slipped surprisingly as did now business capital investment. But electricity production was +6.9% higher in April than a year ago. This is often used as a marker for the real growth in their economy, and the April rise was sharply higher than the +2.1% March rise.

BENCHMARK INTEREST RATES UP
Local swap rates rose marginally today. The two year is up +1 bp, the five year is also up +1 bp, and the ten year is up +2 bps. On Wall Street, the UST 10yr yield has risen today back to 3.00%, a gain of +4 bps. The Aussie Govt 10 yr is now at 2.82% (also up +4 bps). The China 10 yr is at 3.73%, up +3 bps. And the NZ Govt 10 yr is up +1 bp at 2.75%. The 90 day bank bill rate is down -2 bp at 2.01%.

BITCOIN UNCHANGED
The bitcoin price is at US$8,678 which is virtually unchanged from this time yesterday.

NZ DOLLAR SINKS
The NZD has stayed at the lower level it sank to last night and is still at 69.1 US. We are a little lower against the Aussie at 91.8 AUc, and lower at 57.9 euro cents. That has the TWI-5 at 71.7. It is not certain why confidence in the Kiwi dollar is eroding at this time, but it may well be related to the expected mushrooming cost estimates for controlling the mycoplasma bovis cattle disease.

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