ANZ chief Shayne Elliott yesterday conceded that he had never heard of one of Australia’s leading measures of digital inclusion as he tried to defend the bank’s withdrawal of branch services from rural and regional parts of the country.
The ANZ boss faced a grilling from senators inquiring into rural branch closures on Wednesday after saying the bank conducts extensive research into customer acceptance of digital banking before it shutters branches.
Former Morrison Government frontbencher, senator Richard Colbeck probed Elliott on why he had never consulted the findings of the Digital Inclusion Index which is conducted by RMIT in partnership with the Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University and Telstra.
The index is widely recognised in the business and government sectors as a leading benchmark of the impact of digital technology on the lives of vulnerable groups, including low income households, elderly Australians and indigenous communities.
After saying that his bank’s approach to making decisions about closing branches was “reasonably thorough”, Elliott admitted he knew nothing about RMIT’s inclusion index.
“I’m not dismissing the Digital Inclusion Index – I will go and have a look at it and I’m sure there are always things we can learn,” Elliott told the inquiry.
Elliott said ANZ had a different brand proposition to other banks that reflected a customer base skewed to urban professionals on higher incomes and who were digitally savvy.
“Our customer base looks very different to our peers,” Elliott told the parliamentary inquiry.
“An ANZ customer typically is slightly more established in terms of family situations, slightly more affluent, more professional, more urban and that’s you know been the case for a long period of time – and they tend to be more digitally active irrespective of age.
“So we have a slightly different brand proposition.”
Senators participating in the regional banking inquiry yesterday dropped strong hints they were considering the merits of imposing a community service guarantee on major banks to minimise the loss of face-to-face services in rural and regional parts of the country.
ANZ has shrunk its national branch network to 391 outlets after culling 287 since 2017.