News Round Up

New Zealand’s largest finance company, UDC Finance has been given an AA- long-term rating by international ratings agency Standard & Poor’s.

S&P has also assigned an A-1+ short-term counterparty to UDC and says the company's outlook is stable.

"UDC has a sound and defendable business position, enjoying a strong market position, and a solid distribution network leveraging from its well-recognised brand, "S&P Financial Services Ratings director Gavin Gunning says.

"Although UDC is not explicitly or implicitly guaranteed by (its parent) ANZ, its operations are highly integrated within the ANZ group in its capacity as ANZ NZ’s core distribution arm in the delivery of asset-based finance."

UDC’s asset quality is sound considering that asset-based finance is typically a higher-risk business than most other commercial and corporate banking business lines.

The game has been developed as an educational resource designed to encourage understanding of monetary policy.

The game works as a screen with four separate graphs: inflation, real output growth, real interest rates and nominal interest rates. The player's goal is to adjust interest rates so that inflation is kept within the 0 to 3% band.

The virtual economy experiences shocks, causing a change in the inflation rate, to that the player must react by adjusting interest rates. To enhance the challenge further, the player can load a recession or boom, or several other scenarios into the virtual economy.

The game is an adaptation of a similar game available on the Swiss National Bank website.

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