ANZ Corporate Responsibility

Many listeners will be familiar with the term corporate responsibility. It’s an area in which ANZ has established itself as a leader in recent times and at the heart of the banks progressive approach is a desire to develop relationships of trust, respect and integrity. This interview with Brian Hartzer Group Managing Director of ANZ Personal Division examines the importance of corporate responsibility and how it applies to home loan leading at ANZ.

Interviewer: Brian there has been a lot of discussion over recent times around corporate responsibility. Can you tell me why so many organisations are talking about it, and why it’s important to ANZ?

Brian: Well I think fundamentally the community is expecting that big companies will recognise that they have to do more than just make money. They play an important roll in the community and therefore they have to act with integrity as well as give something back to society. I think it’s also true that our employees expect more their investing big portions of their lives in the company and they want to feel good about where they work. So at ANZ corporate responsibility is more than just running a program from a PR point of view its about thinking about the way we go about what we do and making sure our employees feel good about working with us and that our customers and community are pleased to have us as a part of the community.

Interviewer: Brian what lead ANZ to start focusing on corporate responsibility in the first place?

Brian: Well I think it won’t surprise anyone that back in the 90’s bank reputations were fairly poor on the back of branch closures and cut backs in service and reductions in value the people were getting increases in fees and so forth. And that was leading to lower customer satisfaction and increasing threats of regulation. We as an organisation spent a lot of time thinking about this, particularly early in the year 2000 we as a management team we started recognising that this was really getting quite serious and that none of us wanted to work for a company that was hated. And we realised in the long run, if we were going to be sustainable as a business we had to have a reasonable compromise between what was good for the shareholders what was good for the employees and what was good for customers. And we realised we needed to change the way we thought about how the way we went about our business so that customers would feel good about dealing with us and we could have a sustainable business on the back of that.

Interviewer: Can you describe how the changing needs of staff, customers and the wider community have had an impact on how you’ve shaped your corporate responsibility approach?

Brian: Well I think the staring point for ANZ was that were a bank and we shouldn’t try and get involved in things that we don’t know anything about. So we started by focusing on doing things better and how we went about out basic business so making disclosures clear for customers to understand making commitments about not closing branches anymore, making our fees more transparent, giving customers advice about how they could avoid fees. But then we moved on to thinking that as a large company how can we make an impact more broadly in the community and we decided to focus on the issue of financial literacy which was something that was very important to lots of people across society. And so we sponsored some research about the level of financial literacy in the Australian scene and out of that grew a number of initiatives such as our Money Minded program which is one of the most highly regarded adult financial literacy programs in Australia. And we also developed Saver Plus which was a program for helping underprivileged people get out of the poverty trap and start learning how to save money with a Match Savings program. And we worked with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to launch that.

Interviewer: As a customer how does ANZ corporate responsibility focus impact on me for example if I’m buying my first home?

Brian: Well that starting point is to recognise is for many customers the process of buying a home it can be very intimidating. So the most important thing we can do is to have very well trained dedicated mortgage specialists who can work with customers, listen to their needs, help explain everything and advise on the options that are available and help them chose the loan that is right for them.

Interviewer: And how do you do this?

Brian: Well we really focus on taking the fear out of the process, simplifying the process, having the language be very clear. But also making sure we’ve got a range of home loans that are going to meet peoples’ needs. So we have work very hard to simplify our products and they have been recognised by Cannex in the mortgage star rating’s also ANZ’s been recognised as being home loan lender of the year for a number of years now and that’s largely been around the quality of the products.

Interviewer: What happens if a customer has a loan and they are having trouble making their repayments?

Brian: Well this has been one of those issues that have become more relevant over the last couple of years and we’ve been doing a lot of work around this out of the corporate responsibility focus on our hardship policies. So the starting point is to acknowledge that many customers often do find themselves in a position of hardship through no fault of their own. And in the old days I guess banks might take a fairly hard approach to that and what we’ve tried to do is change our policies and educate our staff to work with customers to help them get through that process and create lots of options for them in terms of reducing interest rates or giving them honeymoon periods on repayments and so forth to help them get back on their feet.

Interviewer: What feedback have you had from customers?

Brian: Well certainly the surveys we do of customers we do ring many customers up each month to get objective feedback. That’s been very positive. We have the highest customer satisfaction rating of any of the major banks. And we’ve been awarded a number of awards for our service. We recently won an award in the Australian Customer Service Institute for having the best of the best service excellence of any large company is Australia, not just banks. So we know there’s a lot more to do there’s, a lot of things that we want to improve. But I guess those awards are a sign that we are headed in the right direction.

Interviewer: Of course ANZ is also a major employer is Australia, what are you employees telling you about the impact of corporate responsibility has had on their own lives both professional and personal?

Brian: Well, corporate responsibility in many ways for us is driven by a focus on our employees. Our people want to feel good about where they work and we believe that if we can get people feeling engaged that is they that they really want to contribute to the company and they feel that what they do has some meaning then that’s going to translate into how they serve customers and then in the growth of our business. So we’ve done a lot of things to make it easier for the staff to feel good about where they work and we’re getting great feedback through the customer feedback as well as the staff engagement scores that we do. We have the highest staff engagement of any major company in Australia in the top 20 so that’s a good sign that we are headed in the right direction.

Interviewer: How would you rate the overall success of ANZ corporate responsibility focus?

Brian: We’ve had some great external recognition this year. We won the Prime Minsters award for excellence in community business partnerships. Money Magazine recognised us as the socially responsible bank of the year, which was a great satisfaction for us and for our employees. And I guess that’s really were I see the main impact is that our people increasing tell us they feel good about working at ANZ, and in the end that’s what matters, because if they feel committed to what we are trying to do then that’s going to translate in to how they treat our customers.

Interviewer: Brian it has been great to hear about the things ANZ is doing. Thanks very much

Brian: My pleasure, thank you