I’m very excited today to release the news that I’ve partnered up with ourbrisbane.com to co-produce the "Brisbane Confidential" series that I’ve been talking about for the last year. Brisbane has a surprising number of cool, funky places and I want to show them to you. Each week the series will showcase some of the funkiest cafes, bars, restaurants, boutique stores and events in Brisbane. New episodes will be available each Thursday on ourbrisbane.com, BrisbaneConfidential.com and through iTunes.
Partnering up with ourbrisbane.com is exciting because they are THE site to tell you about what’s happening around Brisbane. They have huge reach in Brisbane, about 500,000 people visit their site each month. When I made a decision to move up here early last year, the first site I ended up on to learn more about Brisbane was ourbrisbane.com and I remember thinking at the time "I wish they had some podcasts".
My guests today help me explore some of the alternatives to the “Big Four” banks in Australia. Let’s say that you, like me, want to completely disassociate yourself from the Big Four - where do you turn? Are there alternatives in Australia?
They both belong to organisations that can provide all of the same services that you get from your bank - and they will do it with less fees and with much more customer service. Why? Both organisations are owned by their members instead of shareholders. In CUA’s case, they are owned by their customers. In ME’s case, they are owned by a group of superannuation firms which, in turn, are owned by their members.
So both organisations exist to provide good service - not solely for the sake of returning profits to shareholders. And, judging by their NPS scores, it makes a difference.
According to this story in the Washington Post, the banksters are going to try to create sneakier ways to make you spend too much money and find yourself being hit with newly created fees in order to prop up their revenues. Expect the same thing to happen in Australia.