ANZ has promoted Maile Carnegie to head a stand-alone retail banking division, while Mark Hand, the current head of retail and commercial banking, will leave the bank by the end of the year.
ANZ yesterday announced it will combine its Digital Division, including ANZx, and its Australian retail business with Carnegie appointed Group Executive Australian Retail, reporting to ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott.
As part of these changes, ANZ said will also “separate out its commercial businesses in Australia into a new division to better prepare it for future growth opportunities."
A perennial theme of Australian banking is the merger, demerger, merger and demerger of retail and commercial banking divisions.
If anything, ANZ is an outlier, playing this game infrequently over the last 20 years.
Hand is paying the price for the blow outs in processing times and erosion of market share within ANZs’ mortgage business over the last year or so.
This is a problem management has repeatedly said it was working to fix, but ANZ recorded no growth in its mortgage book in each of December and January, and the bank’s portfolio has shrunk by one per cent over the last year. Commonwealth Bank and Nab have both increased mortgage lending by more than 8 per cent over the same period.
On the other hand, the reboot of the retail division may reflect longer-term planning.
Elliott said in a statement: “We established our new Digital Division outside of our Australian retail business to ensure we weren’t being limited by existing structures and technology. Our intention was to always bring this work together when it made sense and given our first customer proposition, ANZ Plus, is about to go live, that time is now.
“ANZ Plus, which was built under the ANZx program, is a critical foundation in our digital transformation as we look to improve the services we provide our retail customers in Australia. It is a digital-led retail banking proposition centred on the financial wellbeing of our customers.”
Elliott also said the integration of Digital and Australian Retail, “along with the Institutional and New Zealand businesses performing well, allows increased focus on ANZ’s Commercial Business in Australia”. Outgoing Group Executive Australia Retail & Commercial Mark Hand “will assist Mr Elliott with the establishment of the new Commercial Division” before leaving ANZ later in the year.