Mark, moving over to yourself, how about you? Could you tell us a little bit about you and how you became an apprentice here at JP Morgan?

Yeah, thank you.

Well, I originally started studying food science and health in university and then COVID happened, there was lockdown and I sort of gained a lot of interest in finance.

It was through initially just investing that I sort of do more research into all aspects of finance, but...

While I was in college, I was also working full-time as a pizza chef.

And while I was there, I just had a passion for the communication, the teamwork, the intensity of it all.

And I thought that was a lot more feasible to go into.

So maybe Mark, coming back to you now, having heard Michael's journey year a year into your apprenticeship now, what's surprised you most about your experience so far?

... what do you think the right mix is? Because there will be a demand for an expectation of that there is digitization and that, that service.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, I think you kinda mentioned it, like it's a balance, right? And, and I think that's very important for us as a, as a firm to get right, um, something that we have to be very thoughtful about.

And I think it also is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

I think, you know, various demographics, even within that, the younger generation, uh, there's, you know, folks like myself that are-- they're kinda on the technology bubble where, you know, I don't mind e-transferring some dollars away, but when it comes to something big and important, I wanna talk to somebody.

And then I think of, you know, for instance, my kids, when they get to, to that, to that age, they're probably gonna be completely comfortable doing everything online and, and not necessarily needing that human touch.

Tell me about values to you and, and why it resonates and what's, what's important to you.

This is just awesome, awesome, fascinating stuff.

Yeah.

Well, just literally on the way to site to drill those holes, I'd lodged that quarterly report.

Uh, went out of radio, uh, contact, uh, internet coverage, drilled those holes, made what we thought was the discovery.

I was driving back to Perth with the samples and got into mobile range and got a, a please explain note from the ASX saying, uh, "Justify why we shouldn't delist you.

We don't think you're a going concern." Uh, I said, "W-we are a bloody going concern." [laughing] Um, couldn't say that, uh, so went into a trading halt and got the numbers back so that we could announce that and then, uh, respond to the ASX, which was sweet.

Um, but the, you know, the...

What does that look like when you're, when you're on this discovery journey? Like, how does, how does that come to you? What- Are these, are these people requesting access to a data room? Is- Are people buying, buying stock and you're seeing, you're seeing them come on the register? Like, what, like what does that whole dynamic look like when you're in this position?

I'm the deputy editor for Carrier Management, and I'm here at Risk World in Philadelphia.

We've been able to see really interestingly that the reinsurance and specialty market, which is high value risks but low volume amount of risk per year, really adopt a digital kind of engagement very quickly.

So we've got an accord community called RushLacon, which has been established for about eighteen years now, and they're now exchanging digital submissions, digital invoices, digital claims between the brokers and the reinsurers and the cedents in between.

And that's going really-- that's got a monstrous amount of electronic data exchange in that space, which has been very impressive.

So that space, really good.

But now what we're seeing is we're now doubling down into the North American PNC market, so homeowners, auto insurance, mid-market commercial, BOP policies or workers' comp policies, and looking at that space and going, the standards of here, the data exchange technologies here, we've proven it in reinsurance specialty.

How do we now pivot this market to be able to adopt the same benefits of that automated data exchange experience as we've already proven in reinsurance and specialty? And in part of that kind of engagement, we're bringing brokers, agents, carriers together to go, what data flow should we pri-prioritize? What systems need to be integrated? And that-- your second part of that question was, what are some of the barriers and the challenges associated with that space and what's holding, holding back? It's historically always been cultural change.

Here he is speaking to my colleague, Alex Tarrant, about the strong outlooks for both Australia's beef and sheep sectors as we head into winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

The key driver for, for cattle is, well, firstly, our local conditions.

We've had that sort of seasonal dip in pricing, and where you've got a bit of an autumn pinch anywhere around the country, you become a, a bit of a fore seller into the market, and we've seen that play out, particularly in the sort of southern Queensland, northern New South Wales area, where a lot of cows and even younger cattle were finding their way to market because they just didn't have the grass and water, uh, to feed them.

And so that accentuated perhaps that price dip.

More recently, we've had some rains come through, and now that as long as we've got rain in most of our key production areas in cattle, um, the ability to hold stock and even the desire to hold stock because of the broader positive sentiment and outlook on cattle prices, there's incentive to hold on.

And when you have tension in the marketplace between the restockers and the processors who are looking to fill orders and satisfy a very strong export market, and you start to see pressure on prices to rise.

The real driver for the medium outlook on cattle is the US herd lull and the difficult conditions still being experienced in America, and even the incentive to rebuild that herd in some respects, I would say as well.

And then how's the strength showing through in the sheep sector? Similar or different reasons to in cattle?

In this episode, ANZ Head of agribusiness, Mark Bennett, talks to my colleague Alex Tarrant about how the Middle East conflict has affected key input prices, and analyzes the outlook for Australia's cropping sector.

There's no doubt been significant disruption to a couple of our key inputs for the ag sector coming out of the Middle East region, namely fertilizer supplies and, of course, fuel as has impacted much of our economy in the way that translates through to prices.

Now, whilst there were isolated pockets of supply being troublesome, particularly on fuel, largely people have been able to access fuel as they've needed it, particularly for the critical autumn planting and sowing period, and, and so that's been good.

Fertilizer and fuel are an absolutely needed ingredient [chuckles] to our, our food production systems here in Australia.

We import around $5.5 billion worth of fertilizer as an example of the, the quantum that we're talking about.

So we've seen supply hold on for now.

We've seen prices rise to really quite high levels, spectacularly high levels, but that has moderated again since, so we've still got a high cost structure in play, but it's not at the extreme end of where we've been.

What are you seeing there?