Mandala

Mandala has partnered with Zurich Australia, RedBridge Group Australia, and Accent Research on Zurich's new Community Resilience Index, featured in The Australian Financial Review today.   "Risks are very high at the moment, but they're also just really multidimensional," reflected Mandala's Adam Triggs   The index covers almost 2,5000 local areas across Australia, indicating how well communities can recover from shocks. Resilience scores are based on more than 2 million data points, including public and proprietary data from Zurich and Redbridge and Accent, on the multiple dimensions of resilience: financial, health, social and environmental. We find that the biggest driver of resilience overall is financial resilience, which includes things like access to emergency savings, but that social resilience is a leading indicator of how people are voting, which includes a feeling of belonging in your local community   The findings show large gaps between places and between people. Cottesloe in Western Australia ranked as the most resilient area in the country. Half of the ten least resilient areas are in the Northern Territory. Across Australia, 29 per cent of women fall into the low or very low resilience bands, compared with 9 per cent of men. Women are healthier on average than men. Even so, middle-aged women have the highest rates of low resilience, because they tend to have lower savings and superannuation balances and do more caregiving. Find the article linked in the comments.

Our research with CyberCX is on the front page of the The Australian Financial Review today.   AI will likely make cyberattacks more frequent and more severe. The number of cyber incidents is projected to increase to nine-fold current levels by 2030, from 38,000 last year to 357,000. These incidents could cost Australian businesses up to $37B a year by 2030, more than 1.3 per cent of GDP today.   Much of this cost can be avoided. Foundational defences such as secure-by-design approaches, multifactor authentication and patching vulnerabilities could reduce losses by $24B. Australian businesses currently spend around 4.4 per cent of IT budgets on cybersecurity, below global benchmarks of 7 to 10 per cent.   Find the article linked in the comments.

Mandala welcomes Edward Lowe as an Associate in our Sydney office. Ed is a strategy consultant who was most recently at EY Parthenon (formerly Port Jackson Partners) where he has advised clients in the resources, utilities, and industrial sectors. Ed holds a Bachelor of Economics from the Australian National University and has a particular interest in the productivity challenge facing the economy and the options available for policymakers to respond across the themes of tax, competition, industry policy, and AI. Upon joining, he said "I'm thrilled to be joining the talented team at Mandala and contribute to important policy work at a critical juncture for Australia. It's a unique firm operating at a really interesting niche in the market."

Mandala welcomes George Carew-Jones as an Associate. George has worked in sustainability and climate policy for the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, the University of Oxford, ERM, and a start-up called Watermarq. He has advised the EMDE Investor Taskforce, a group of institutional investors convened by the UK Government, to help overcome barriers to financing climate solutions in emerging markets. His interests are in power systems, hydrogen, mining, industrial policy and water scarcity. George holds a MSc in Environmental Governance and a Bachelor's in Geography, both from the University of Oxford. He has published numerous working papers at the intersection of economic development and climate policy. Upon joining, he said "I'm really excited to be joining Mandala at such a consequential time in global public policy. The team have been so welcoming, and I can't wait to get going."

Advanced economies around the world are all solving for slow productivity growth. Mandala’s latest research, commissioned by Airwallex, explores how modern financial infrastructure can help small and medium businesses (SMBs) perform better, through reductions in administrative burdens and improvements in operational efficiency. Economies that invest in and adopt sophisticated enabling tools will be more globally competitive.    Our work with Airwallex finds that it supported $4.6 billion in economic benefits for Australian businesses and the broader economy in 2025: • SMBs capture $2.1 billion in economic benefits annually, the largest share of any business segment on the platform, through lower costs, reduced administrative burden and productivity gains. • Airwallex supports 29,000 jobs across the Australian economy, with benefits flowing through customers and their supply chains. • Businesses using Airwallex report stronger revenue growth following adoption, supported by international expansion and greater market diversification. • Around one quarter of the economic benefits flow to regional, rural and remote Australia.   The research also highlights how digital financial infrastructure can help Australian businesses go global. Export revenue processed through Airwallex has grown sixfold since 2021, while its SMB customers are increasingly trading across a broader range of international markets. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gF_ScTUX

Mandala’s Adam Triggs gave the economic update at the MGA Independent Businesses Australia Industry Breakfast in Melbourne last week. He argued that the Australian economy has a serious resilience challenge, with too many of our eggs in just a few baskets: • GDP growth is highly dependent on migration: we’ve had 4 quarters or negative or zero growth since 2019. Remove immigration and we’ve had 14. • Business investment is highly dependent on data centres: much of the recent investment growth has come solely from data centres • Consumption is highly dependent on wealthy older Australians: young people are sharply cutting back while older Australians are increasing their spending We need broader-based on growth and investment if we are to have a more resilient economy.

Earlier this week, we released a new report on what could be achieved if local and combined authorities across England had the same devolved powers that transformed Greater Manchester. Since devolution began in 2009, Greater Manchester's economy has grown by nearly 45%, outperforming both the rest of England and the UK. Mandala's latest research examines how the Mayor and GMCA turned that power into coordinated investment across transport, housing, skills and economic development, delivering a 41% jump in bus journeys and 11,000 new homes, and why it worked. Extend similar powers across England, and we estimate up to £80bn in additional annual economic activity, over 93,000 new homes, and £3.1bn from improved life expectancy. The case for devolution isn't theoretical. Manchester has already shown what it delivers. Link to the report is here: https://lnkd.in/dmuZERi4 Coverage of our report is in Comments.

It was great to meet with my former colleagues Chris Bowen, Josh Wilson MP and Kate Thwaites at Parliament House today. They heard from the University of Canberra’s Professor Leslie Phil Duncan and Rowan Foley, CEO of the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation (AbCF), about a joint proposal from UC, AbCF and Mandala Partners: ‘Unlocking High Integrity Carbon And Nature Repair Outcomes Across Indigenous Lands In Australia’. The proposal provides a pathway to unlock Indigenous lands – up to 57% of Australia's landmass – for carbon and nature repair projects that could help Australia's transition to net zero, but funding is needed to remove the upfront barriers. 

Mandala’s Jun Tong joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)'s NT Country Hour to discuss the Northern Territory's solar energy potential and its ability to support future data centre capacity. The global race for AI computing power has every economy thinking hard about data centre capacity. Developers will go where energy is reliable, cheap and accessible, and the Territory is well placed on all counts. Jun also made the point that if the Territory can harness its substantial energy potential, large industrial users need not compete with households and local businesses for existing supply. Once that infrastructure is built out, newer sectors such as hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel and green metals processing will be better able to establish themselves. In Jun's words, this "catalyses an economic future for the Territory, but also the Commonwealth". Listen to the full segment via the link in the comments.