Ahead of its strategy briefing, ANZ has released details of CEO Nuno Matos’ four strategic pillars: customer first, simplicity, resilience, and delivering value. Matos believes that focusing on these pillars will “unlock our potential to win.” ANZ is one of Australia’s largest banks, providing a range of financial products and services to retail, commercial, and institutional customers. The company also operates in several international markets.
The new strategy signals a back-to-basics approach, prioritizing proprietary lending through ANZ’s digital channels and branches over mortgage brokers. The bank will also target deposits from the mass affluent segment and individuals relocating to Australia. To protect capital, ANZ will discontinue its share buyback program and apply a small discount to the next two dividend reinvestment plans. This measure aims to maintain the current dividend level when full-year results are reported next month, addressing prior analyst expectations of a potential dividend cut.
ANZ has confirmed that its technology project, ANZ Plus, will be scaled back to become a “digital front end” for retail and business customers, rather than a completely new platform. Despite previously announced job cuts of 3,500, ANZ plans to increase the number of mortgage lenders in its branches by up to 50 per cent and significantly expand its business banking team by a similar percentage.
The commercial division has been renamed the “business and private bank,” and ANZ intends to increase the number of relationship managers in the private bank to better serve its 17,500 customers. Matos will present the complete “ANZ 2030” strategy to analysts and investors later today.
