In discussing ANZ group's half-year results, acting CFO Graham Hodges noted that the group had changed some capitalisation policy settings.  Notably, it has increased the threshold for capitalisation of software development costs. The bank has therefore been directly expensing more project related costs.  The rationale is that this reflects a rapidly changing technology landscape and increased pace of innovation in financial services, which results in increasingly shorter useful lives for smaller items of software in the 'digital world'. Hodges, in his presentation to analysts added that this showed a more competitive streak, "driving more disciplined commercial decisions."  "The first change was to reduce the threshold under which ANZ capitalised its software; and the second change was to narrow the criteria we use for capitalisation," Hodges said. And the reason for making the change, Hodges said, was that, "in today's environment a lot of the technology [the bank uses] has a much shorter [lifecycle]," Hodges told ANZ in-house publication, Blue Notes. "We've taken [a charge of] $A1 million for reducing costs in the business restructuring," he said. "Some of which we've already done in the first half, around two thirds of which we've identified will have its full effect in the second half."   "That [item] reflects a discipline we want to have across the business where we expense more in today results and not put it on the slate to be an expense in the future." The changes came into effect from 1 October 2015, with the result that ANZ has booked $161 million higher operating expenses than would otherwise have been the case. "We've also gone through the past balance sheet, as at the start of October last year, and taken a charge of $468 million, which reflects the projects we've done in the past which would have been have been subject to accelerated amortisation under our new rules," Hodges said. "And of course our open will be higher for the next 18 months or so, but as we go through that period, because of the reduction in capitalised balances, we'll see amortisation costs come down. 'We also took a restructuring provision for reducing costs," Hodges said. "The third item was the revaluation of our minority costs in Asia - with AmBank (down by $260 million) and bank of Tianjin listed on the HK stock exchange." Such simplification actions are also reflected in lower staffing costs, Hodges told Blue Notes.