Kelly turns metaphysical on cross-selling
Gail Kelly, the most tightly scripted of bank chief executives, allowed herself a moment of poetic fancy yesterday when she offered her vision of the "nirvana of banking". It turns out that the ultimate state of being is when your customers buy your banking and wealth management products.Kelly has always been aggressive in pursuit of the cross-sell or "depth of relationship" as she prefers to call it. St George Bank briefings were never complete without a reference to the improvement in products per customer or share of wallet. At Westpac her focus has not changed.It was clear from Kelly's comments at the bank's 2010/11 results' briefing that she believes Westpac's biggest division, Retail and Business Banking, is starting to achieve some results in that department. Customer numbers with four or more products rose 90 basis points to 29.3 per cent, with a particularly strong cross-sell of BT Super for Life and general insurance products.Twenty per cent of Retail and Business Banking customers have a wealth product. Branch staff are selling 1500 BT Super for Life accounts each week.The bank's wealth penetration (a Roy Morgan measure of the number of bank customers who also have a wealth products), at 20 per cent, is higher than that of all its peers. In the private bank, 52 per cent of customers have eight products or more, an increase of 3.6 per cent over the previous year.Kelly said these improvements came from a couple of initiatives the bank has taken over the past couple of years. Westpac Local, a program aimed at improving skills and efficiency at the branch level, is "getting staff closer to the customer" and deepening relationships.The other initiative is the use of multiple brands, which Kelly said was effective in creating segmentation. The group has been signing up 850 new customers a week in Victoria since re-branding St George branches in that state as Bank of Melbourne.Retail and Business Banking produced cash earnings of $1.9 billion - up 11 per cent on the previous year. BT Financial's earnings were up nine per cent.Net interest margin for Retail and Business Banking fell seven basis points from 2.14 per cent to 2.07 per cent. Funding costs rose through 2010, but the repricing of loans affected results only late in the year.Deposits were up nine per cent. Mortgages were up eight per cent. Business loans were up five per cent.In wealth management, platform share was steady at 20 per cent and corporate super share was steady at 10 per cent. The margin lending portfolio fell 19 per cent, from $3.5 billion to $2.8 billion.The group's funds under management fell five per cent over the year, from $52.2 billion to $49.8 billion. The fall accelerated in the second half when funds under management fell eight per cent.Funds under advice fell three per cent to $78.3 billion.