Danielle Curry (L), digital transformation lead, with ANZ Plus Coach Olivia Kyomugisha
The rollout of ANZ Plus is gathering momentum, after a bumpy start following the bank’s launch of its more sophisticated app in March last year.
ANZ Plus has more than A$3.8 billion in deposits, the bank told Banking Day. This is small beer by comparison with an ANZ retail deposit book that is more than 40 times this amount.
Plus has more than 176,000 customers, around 30 per cent of whom are new to bank.
One driver of the uptake is ANZ’s competitive interest rate of 4.0 per cent on the first $250,000.
Another driver may well be the renovation of the customer support model behind ANZ Plus, and the retraining of frontline staff as “coaches”.
Peter Dalton, managing director of ANZx, as part of the bank’s submission to the ACCC in connection with the takeover of Suncorp Bank, explained that coaches are “ANZ staff trained both to support customers in their use of ANZ Plus, and … by providing personalised financial advice”.
As part of ANZx, the bank is “trialling a new store concept to help customers understand how to improve their financial well-being, rather than simply transacting as they do in typical bank branches,” Dalton said.
“The availability of coaches is an important feature of ANZ Plus and, thus, ANZx.”
The bank has two ANZ Plus stores in pilot, one in Potts Point and one in Richmond, and Banking Day this week dropped in on the latter to learn some more about the model.
“We look after customers with digital support, and show them around the app, one on one,” Danielle Curry, digital transformation lead said.
“Customers told us they wanted this support.”
An ANZ Plus store is cosy, minimally-staffed and strictly cashless, with not even an ATM. Never mind, Westpac have two ATMs next door while NAB have three at the corner.
All this had better work for the bank, which is betting its future on ANZx and ANZ Plus.
CEO Shayne Elliot, in his part of the submission to the ACCC said: “I expect that ANZ Plus will become the cornerstone of how our retail and small business customers bank with us in the future.”