ANZ and E*Trade link up online

When ANZ bought the execution-only stockbroker E*Trade Australia in the middle of 2007, one of its aims was to introduce ANZ customers to the broking service by giving them a seamless link between their online banking account and the broker.

That seamless link was finally put in place a month ago. ANZ customers with online access can use a single sign-on to enter their transaction account and jump across to their E*Trade account.

E*Trade managing director Stuart Sayers said the change has had an immediate impact. The flow of people coming through ANZ's website to E*Trade increased threefold in the first month.

Sayers said: "Before this you had to log on twice to have access to your ANZ accounts and your E*Trade account. Now you just click through to your portfolio.

"We are growing the number of customers that come from ANZ."

Sayers said ANZ had left E*Trade to run as an autonomous business but had provided some important back office support.

"We have our own IT and systems but they run in the ANZ data centre. That has made our service much more reliable.

"Until recently the phone system we had here was the one that was bought for the start-up in 1997. Our service levels are better and much more reliable."

Sayers said the business started to recover in February and March and has been growing steadily ever since.

"August would have been a good month in any year. Two out of our five best days ever were in August.

"Two things account for the very strong figures in the past month. There was a lot of pent-up money sitting on the sidelines.

"And traders are keeping the duration of their holds sort. The average has come down from eight days to four. That explains a lot of the volume.

"We are also seeing pretty strong growth in customer numbers. A lot of investors are leaving full-service brokers after a couple of years when the advice they paid a lot of money for did not do them any good."