More investment ahead for ANZ

ANZ delivered a well-received profit in 2014. One of the positive surprises was the good cost to income ratio and productivity numbers.

According to ANZ Group chief operating officer Alistair Currie, ANZ's investment in regional operations in Asia and the Pacific has begun to pay dividends, with the local businesses delivering many pleasing results.

"We're now extracting value after some years of investment in putting our regional operations platform into place and starting the consolidation and upgrading of the operating systems that conduct all our transactional processing," he said, in an interview posted to the bank's BlueNotes portal.

"So our hubs are really now starting to kick out value," Currie said.

ANZ's business increased its output volume for less cost, leading to a 12 per cent lift in productivity for the September second half.

Currie said the improvement was broad based.

"We're putting more and more work into lower-cost locations," he said. "We're automating processes more than we've done in the past and everything is being done at higher quality."

This provided an improved experience for everyone, including customers, Currie said, as it enabled the bank to get things right the first time and quickly.

Currie believes the group will keep delivering operational improvement over and over in years to come.

Chief executive Mike Smith said, at the results announcement, "frankly there's more gas in the tank".

ANZ is also planning to invest more on its business and current technology structure.