National Australia Bank's BNZ has appointed Melburnian and former ANZ executive Anthony Healy as chief executive to replace Andrew Thorburn, who is to become chief executive of National Australia Bank.Healy has been the director of BNZ Partners, the bank's business, private and rural banking arms, since November 2009. He was previously the chief executive of ANZ's New Zealand asset finance arm, UDC Finance.As BNZ Partners director, Healy oversaw the growth of BNZ's rural banking arm. It won market share off the New Zealand market leader, ANZ, at a rate of one percentage point of share per year for the past five years, Healy told Banking Day in an interview. BNZ lifted its rural banking share into the low to mid 20 per cent range, moving into a clear second place behind ANZ, which absorbed rural market leader National in late 2012 and has lost its dominant 40 per cent plus market share. BNZ built an agri-services centre in Hamilton for smaller clients, allowing its specialist rural bankers to increase business sharply.Healy said BNZ would continue the focus on its people and leadership built up under Thorburn. BNZ continues to have higher lending discretion thresholds than its other Australian-owned Big Four competitors.BNZ would also focus on rolling out a change to its core banking platform, he said. It is currently two years into a five-year process and will be adopting the development of the Oracle-based platform that NAB is adopting.Healy said BNZ would also continue to connect its customers into NAB's Asian network to take advantage of the 30 million a year growth in the emerging middle class in Asia, which is increasing demand for New Zealand's protein and tourism."That's one big opportunity for New Zealand and for us as a bank," he said.Healy's appointment is effective from May 12 this year and subject to the approval of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.Previous to joining ANZ, he was deputy group managing director of AmBank Group in Malaysia, in which ANZ has a large stake. He has post graduate diplomas in finance and economics from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Science majoring in economics and psychology from University of Melbourne.