Business

What international sharemarket turmoil means for your KiwiSaver KiwiSaver is directly affected by global market volatility as about 60 percent of KiwiSaver assets are invested offshore. Photo: 123RF There's one clear piece of advice for anyone worried about the impact of international sharemarket movements on their KiwiSaver balances: Ignore it. (Provided you've got your settings right.) Markets around the world were volatile on Friday and to start this week. The softness in US markets has been largely driven by concerns the central bank might cut rates too late to avoid a downturn. Intel's share price fell 26 percent on Friday, to the lowest level in a decade. High-profile investor Warren Buffett was reported to have sold more than US$75 billion in shares in the second quarter, taki...

Finance Minister Nicola Willis at the weekend added fuel to speculation that the government is planning a sale of the bank. Photo: Kiwibank Any potential sale of Kiwibank will have to be managed carefully to ensure it creates the potential for real growth for the bank, industry commentators say. Finance Minister Nicola Willis added fuel to speculation that the government is planning a sale of the bank, when she spoke at the National Party conference at the weekend. She said all options needed to be on the table to improve the sectors' competitiveness. "The recent Commerce Commission study into New Zealand's banking sector makes it crystal clear: disruptive forces are needed to drive change," she said. "No more cosy oligopoly. Instead we need more mavericks, open banking technology, more...

Enable.me financial advisor Nadine Higgins said people are likely to spend more money using card than cash. Photo: 123RF Have you ever got to the end of the month and been surprised by the state of your credit card bill? It is a smack in the face felt by many. New Zealanders had $6.1 billion outstanding on credit cards in July according to the Reserve Bank. Enable.me financial advisor Nadine Higgins told Afternoons people were likely to spend more money using card than cash. "It is just something I observed in my own life, if I'm completely honest, and it is what I have observed with my clients," she said. "I have gone to the counter to pay for something, say at a restaurant, and I swipe my card and I have not even clocked exactly what the number is. "And so that is how far away we ar...

Some restaurants say Uber Eats fees are greedily gobbling up their profits and they are now urging people to bypass the delivery giant and order from them directly. Jazzy Seng, manager of Christchurch eateries Thai Box and Thai Container, with both takeaways using Uber Eats, told Checkpoint Uber Eats takes a 30 percent cut. "Uber Eats is set up to extract as much money as possible, while still remaining viable for people by taking 30 percent from restaurants and take away joints like us and then they take a further service fee from customers who order from uber eats," she said. She said customers did not see the cut from their end, because they were shown a different set up. "They don't know what goes into Uber Eats and what they're spending." The restaurants take a cut, meaning their pr...

(File image) Photo: New Zealand Herald / Andrew Warner Police are seeking the suspension of South Island New World liquor licenses for alleged continual breaches of online alcohol advertising controls. A two-day hearing in Christchurch District Court began on Monday and will continue into Tuesday. Police alcohol harm prevention officer, Inspector Ian Paulin, has applied to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority to suspend the off-licences of 35 Foodstuffs South Island's New World supermarkets - the majority of stores in the South Island. The Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act only allows discounts of more than 25 percent to be promoted inside licensed premises. Paulin alleged the supermarket chain had breached those rules through online advertising relating to the advertisement of D...

An EFTPOS card being swiped at a terminal. Photo: 123RF A case in which a woman ended up with $10,000 debt after buying a $920 fridge has sparked a warning from the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme (IFSO) - and a refund to the borrower. The case was recently investigated by the scheme, which does not identify the people who complain nor the providers they complain about. The woman had needed a new fridge, and found one that cost $920. The shop offered her a credit card to purchase it, with an available credit balance of $6000. She then used the card to buy other things and ended up struggling with the repayments, so the card provider recommended she take a personal loan to pay it off. But the woman then had to give up her job because of medical issues, which put her int...

The Reserve Bank. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The official cash rate (OCR) is likely to drop to 5 percent by the end of the year, Westpac economists say. The bank has updated its OCR forecast, and now expects a drop in October and November. Chief economist Kelly Eckhold said while it had brought forward its prediction by a month, it had made relatively few changes to the rest of its forecast. "We see 25bps (basis points) cuts in October and November and another in February next year, then we see the next one in the May monetary policy statement. We still get the OCR at 4.5 percent in May next year, which is what we've previously said." He said the bank had revised down its short-term economic growth forecasts "reasonably significantly". It expects the economy to have shrunk in the sec...

The power balance is tilting further towards employers, with the growth in labour costs cooling along with the job market, ASB senior economist Mark Smith says. File photo Photo: RNZ The unemployment rate is expected to rise to a near four-year high as demand for workers cools while the economy struggles under the weight of high interest rates. Economists expect data due on Wednesday will show a rise in annual unemployment to 4.7 percent in the June quarter, up from 4.3 percent in March - the highest since the end of 2020. Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said the labour market is "clearly softening", something the Reserve Bank (RBNZ) wants to see. "The rise in unemployment from its lows was gradual at first, but has picked up the pace in recent quarters," he said. The labour sho...

Barrier Air's Cessna Grand Caravan on the tarmac at Bay of Islands Airport in Kerikeri. Photo: Peter de Graaf/RNZ Competition has arrived on Northland's busiest air route with the inaugural Barrier Air flight from Auckland to Kerikeri landing at Bay of Islands Airport just before 7pm on Sunday. The first passenger off the plane was Kerikeri man Chris Hoffman, who was delighted to be able to choose which airline to fly with for the first time in many years. "The flight was excellent. I chose Barrier Air to support a new airline, and more competition coming in to Kerikeri. I fly with them out of Kaitāia quite regularly so it's great to see them having a new location here in the North," Hoffmann said. The first passenger off Barrier Air's inaugural flight to Kerikeri, Chris Hoffmann, r...

The payments were made through 2022 to low- and middle-income earners to help with the impact of inflation. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King Less than 14 percent of the people who were incorrectly paid a cost-of-living payment ever paid the money back, Inland Revenue says. The payments were made through 2022 to low- and middle-income earners to help with the impact of inflation. Payments were made in three instalments to a total of $350. But Inland Revenue had to contact 80,000 people it believed had wrongly received at least one of the payments, including people who had left the country, and people who were not in work. They were asked to return the money. A spokesperson said the total number of cost-of-living repayments made was 10,985. "We did see a direct increase in repayments rec...