the mozo blog

A story came out this week that seemed 10 years too late – owing to a computer glitch, a sizeable number of Bank of Queensland and BankWest ATM and eftpos machines malfunctioned and stopped working. The reason? An internal clock in the devices ticked over to 2016 instead of 2010, thereby rendering any card with an expiry date earlier than 2016 out of date.

It was always a disappointment to me when the millennium rolled in and nothing happened. Kevin Costner had a large part to play in this, my desire to live in a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland piqued after watching Waterworld. I bought the canned goods and the bottled water. I sacrificed an entire summer’s worth of backyard cricket so I could construct a fallout shelter in the garden. So it was with glee and perhaps the tiniest glimmer of hope that I read about this latest development.

Were there irregularities in the time space continuum in Queensland and Western Australia? Should I be expecting a drive-by visit from a Delorean? More importantly, should I evict the 20 Israeli backpackers from my bomb shelter? They’ve been a real cash cow through the recession.

The whole saga got me thinking about what the world of banking will be like 6 years from now so I’ve constructed a basic timeline of events:

2011 – Gail Kelly becomes a blender jockey at her local Boost Juice after getting the heave-ho from Westpac on the back of a failure to glean a single home loan application in 2010.

2012 – In a bloody coup, the two American marketing gurus in the Commonwealth Bank ads take over the bank and install basketball hoops in branches and hand out money box transformers to kids, actually making going to the bank somewhat enjoyable. This popularity springboards them ahead of the competition and they take over an ailing Westpac, re-branding themselves as ‘Compac’.

2013 - NAB forced by the Australian government, led by a Hologram of the late John Howard, to annex ANZ when a financially crippled New Zealand becomes an Australian state (South Tasmania) and the unifying moniker of National Australia Bank was deemed to suffice for both.

2014 – Compac flourish for a couple of years till they are successfully sued for billions of dollars by American computer manufacturer ‘Compaq’ for copyright infringement. Daily Telegraph headline reports that the outcome has put the ‘Bank back into bankrupt’. Daily Telegraph headline writer fired.

2015 – With ‘Compac’ in dire straits, all their concerns are taken over by NAB. NAB renamed ‘The Bank’.

2016 - Nationwide backlash to what Howard labels a “perceived lack of competition”. Financial markets crippled as investors lose faith in “The Bank” after a 0.25% Reserve Bank increase is met with a 15% rise in the mortgage rate.

Year 0 – Former ANZ upper management turned radical New Zealand nationalists hacked into the software controlling the Howard hologram, and through a series of poorly thought out foreign policy moves, make North Korea unleash three nuclear warheads. Only those of us with fallout shelters remain. We have no oil or water, but luckily I have Gail Kelly with me to make me smoothies, fruit whips and juices. And there isn’t a financial institution in sight.

I guess the apocalypse ain’t so bad after all…

Compare banks with Mozo.com.au

It’s not yet been a week since Mozo’s VICE Presidential race kicked off, and already Australians have confessed to a quarter of a billion dollars worth of spending sins. Who knew you were all so profligate?

Well, we kinda suspected…

But the big surprise has been the vices themselves, with Gadgets taking the lead on $77 million, closely followed by Shoes & Clothes.

Seems we’re a nation of chic geeks.

So what ever happened to the party-hard Aussie yobbo? After a strong start, Booze has drooped to a groggy $15m, and Ciggies are only coughing up $4.5m.

Of course, it’s early days yet, and having stepped over more than one xmas reveller on the way to work this morning, Mozo thinks there are a few sinners holding out on us…

So pop an aspirin and join the race to become Australia’s first VICE President.
http://mozo.com.au/vice-calculator

That five grand – and limitless kudos – could be yours!

Dear Mozonians,

Do you know how much your Vices are costing you? If you’re anything like us, you’ve got no idea just how bad it is. All those coffees each week, the shoes clogging up your cupboard, the night on the drink that mysteriously drained your whole bank account – and let’s not even get started on Christmas and New Years.

Truly, we are a viceful people.

But here’s the good news: We’re looking for Australia’s First Vice President! That’s right, we’re going to reward the vices you try so desperately to hide!

Simply head to our Vice Calculator, tot up that vicious spend and come up with a campaign promise to smite your vice. The candidate with the best promise will win $5000!

Follow the campaign trail on Facebook and Twitter to read and vote on your rivals’ promises, and be sure to boost your supporter base — get your friends to vote for you.

The VICE President will be inaugurated on Australia Day — so join the race and start campaigning today!

Team Mozo

Electoral Regulator

You may have noticed there are more than the usual amount of Tom Selleck and David Boon lookalikes around town these days. This isn’t an 80’s flashback dream you’re having, it’s Movember, the time of year to celebrate the gift of upper lip facial hair. We here at Mozo think it’s about time we dropped the razor and kicked back for the month long “Mozotache Madness”. And to be honest, could we have asked to have a better name here at Mozo to support Movember?

So if anyone is feeling extra generous then perhaps you would like to make a donation to me and my team. We’re called “The Tom Selleck Fan Club” and you can donate via this link:

https://www.movember.com/au/donate/your-details/member_id/79844/

We’re all in it for the good of the cause, which is for prostate cancer and male depression. Plus, in the spirit of Mozo, the Movember people send you a nice little tax receipt for your tax deductions, helping you to save money off your tax bill at the end of the financial year!

So normally the Mozo Blog keeps you up to date with great deals, bank tricks and savvy financial moves. But today we wanted to tell you about a newly awarded tool that could save you a bunch — ourselves!
Abandoning our usual modesty for a moment, our Health Check feature was named a finalist for ‘Best Online Tool’ in the SmartCompany Web Awards. (Of course, we always suspected that Mozo’s unique facility to instantly compare your home loan or credit card with the rest of the market was pretty special.)

It confirms our place as Australia’s best website to help you through the money maze, saving you on fees and interest, as well as time.

So if you’re credit card or home loan is looking a little sick, give it an (awarded) Health Check! Let us crunch the numbers to see who’s the best performer for your personal financial situation.

See what all the hypes about: Health Check Your Credit Card, Health Check Your Home Loan, Health Check Your Personal Loan, Healh Check Your Car Loan.

I had to pinch myself yesterday as I absorbed the headline “John Symond defends banks’ decision to pocket rate cut”  (check it out, and the reactions, at Lending Central)

What the….? Is this THE John Symond. The world really has changed.

When John Symond starts defending the banks you know something is wrong. The problem is, there are no challenger brands left, at least not on the lending side. In recent years the most successful challenger brands in lending have been Aussie, Wizard and BankWest. They have connected with consumers in a way the old players just cannot do, and have brought really strong products to market. And surprise, surprise, all were successful in attracting large volumes of customers away from the big banks.

So how does Commonwealth Bank respond, by competing with them on product and marketing? No, they take them out of the market instead. They bought BankWest, bought a stake in Aussie, and Aussie bought Wizard and swiftly killed the brand entirely. So we wake up today with a very different world where competition in banking is just not what it was. And that’s bad news for consumers.

So essentially Commonwealth Bank is now left to develop products and marketing as they see fit. Here’s an example I just saw on a banner ad this morning - ”No annual fees forever on the Low Fee MasterCard. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

No, it wasn’t hard at all. Which is why I want to know why it took so long to do it? The no annual fee ever promise has been in the market for 6 years.

But worse than that, let’s look behind the headline message and see what the offer really is. Clicking it takes you to a page which then says:

“No annual fee for Commonwealth Bank customers who take up a new Low Fee credit card and spend $1000 per year. Annual fee $24 for non-Commonwealth Bank customers”

So in fact it isn’t even a no annual fee forever card at all!! And why market something on a widely shown banner ad that is actually only available for your own customers?? And never mind the fact that the interest rate is 18.49%.

When product development and marketing is left in the hands of the big banks it’s not happy times for consumers unfortunately. Let’s hope some new challenger brands are on the horizon, because Australians need them.

Today we open the doors to Mozo!

We’ve been building Mozo for over 18 months, but as the world is under the spell of tough financial times, our launch timing seems just right. It’s a time when everyone needs to take care of their hard earned money more than ever before. Mozo is here to help you do just that – get your finances sorted.

So have a play around the site and let us know what you think. I’d love to hear from you directly, so why not email me on rohan.gamble@mozo.com.au with any feedback or suggestions.

So what is Mozo then?

Mozo has everything you need to make a financial decision on the one website, combining personalised financial product comparison tools with customer ratings.

Whether you’re looking for a new savings account or a great mortgage lender, it’s important to look beyond the big budget marketing campaigns, which don’t tell the whole story. The difference at Mozo is, we do. We’re here to level the playing field and help Australians make better financial decisions.

For the first time, Australians get to have their say on what they think of their bank. Mozo doesn’t make subjective judgements. We’ve designed the ratings system, but the rest is up to real customers to have their say.

To kick things off we partnered with research firm Roy Morgan to survey thousands of Australian banking customers. The results are fascinating, and we already have over 10,000 product reviews on the site. We’ll blog about some of the more interesting results in future posts.

In the meantime, we’re now inviting all Australian banking customers to rate your bank. So join the conversation, and put your mouth where your money is!

Mozo is here to help Australians navigate the money maze, and our public journey begins today.

After the traditional nine months of incubation, we’re ready to give birth. So today we have unveiled our baby for the first time outside the walls of our Surry Hills office.

As our site is only a baby, it is likely to have teething problems! So as our first foray out into the real world we’ve invited our family and friends to check out the site and give us all their feedback – the good, the bad and the ugly. Once we’ve spent a few weeks ironing out the kinks from all that we’ll open the door to everyone else.

Of course while our public journey starts today, the Mozo history goes back a little further.

It all started because I think that too many of us put up with bad deals from our financial providers because it is just too damn hard to do anything about it. We know we should, but we just don’t act. So in early 2007 I decided to do something about it. The initial idea for Mozo was born, and since then we have set about putting together all the pieces to make it a reality.

Our vision for Mozo is to empower Australians by giving them everything they need to find and select the best financial products, all from the comfort of their own lounge room. In doing so we will become the best way for financial providers to connect with new customers, thereby creating the Mozo marketplace.

So what is Mozo exactly? Well Mozo is short for Money Zone, and that’s what we intend to be, a zone to help people with all things money related.

So as soon as we’ve made the changes our helpful family and friends suggest, we’ll open the door to Mozo and let everyone in. See you in the money zone soon!