Comment: years after St George takeover Westpac gets to work
"What have you been doing the last six years?" was a pointed, and pertinent, question by JP Morgan banking analyst Scott Manning late in yesterday's investor day for Westpac.Underlying Provoking the question was the bank's clarity on the remaining, andbut still extensive, overlap between Westpac's own systems and those of St George Bank (the takeover of which was announced more than seven years ago).The list of significant, duplicate systems is headed by the mortgage origination platforms, with that of brands under the St George banner operated independently.Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer even talked of scope for economies in the mortgage processing operations of the bank's main brand, a reference that skates around the long running difficulty of making the now 20-year old mortgage processing centre in Adelaide any sort of centre of excellence."Delivering one bank" was one of the slogans used to label one program of work that, with others, is promised to deliver "significant efficiency opportunities".Some systems will be bound together in what the bank called a "customer service hub", a parallel to the CommSee system long in use at Commonwealth Bank.