Credit and capital in harmony for ANZ

The current economic environment was "a good place for bank credit quality " and ANZ would "see the benefits of that for some time to come," the bank's chief financial officer, Shayne Elliott, told its Blue Notes news site yesterday.

"The economy here is slowing and interest rates are low and those things are generally reasonably accommodating for the credit cycle. We're not getting into the heady days where people are over borrowing or over leveraging," Elliott said.

ANZ core equity tier one capital ratio rose by 20 basis points to 8.4 per cent over the quarter. The bank said this worked out to "11.9 per cent [on a] Basel 3 internationally comparable basis."

Of capital, Elliott said "capital generation is really important, at any time, in a bank's position but as of today, with a lot of regulatory change that we've already experienced  - and more to come, that's been given even greater focus.

"At ANZ we generate good levels of organic capital. We are a growing business though, and that growth opportunity we have  - that option that we have - needs to be invested in. And so at the same time we generating lots of capital from a lot of our home businesses, we want to invest that capital to build growth and return for the long term. And a lot of that - not all of it, but a lot of it - is in places like Asia.     

"Our job in senior management is to make sure that we get that balance right so we're generating more than enough organic capital not only to give some of that back to shareholders in the form of dividends but to also be able to seed and invest in long term growth for our franchise. And we're confident we can get that balance right."