News Release
For Release: 7 May 2024

Transcript of bluenotes video interview with ANZ Chief
Executive Officer Shayne Elliott
BRETT FOLEY: Morning, Shayne. Thanks for joining bluenotes on the morning of the half year
result. Now you’re coming off a record year in financial 2023, and the numbers are again
strong this year, but you've talked a lot about consolidation and delivery, so can you explain
what you mean by that?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: First of all, 2023 was a fantastic year and it was a record, not just infinancial terms, but we really achieved a lot strategically in that year and the first half year isa continuation of that. So what we set about to do in 2024, we use this idea of consolidationand delivery, to say, hey, there's been a lot of repositioning of the bank over the last sevento eight years. We’ve sold a lot of businesses, we've restructured the bank, we've got things
going, we've got real momentum. And this was a year to really double down on delivery. And
that's what we're really pleased with in the half. All of our four businesses are performing
really well, contributing positively in terms of returns. But beneath that, or more importantly
from my perspective, making strategic progress in terms of strengthening their businesses
for long term sustainable value creation.
BRETT FOLEY: Another consistent theme is diversification. You’ve spoken about ANZ having
options that some of our peers don't. Can you explain a little bit about what you mean by
that?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: One of the great strengths of ANZ is this diversification, which we'veworked hard to build. We have four great businesses – our Institutional bank, New Zealand,
the Australian Retail bank, and Australia Commercial. And they each have terrific market
positions. But because we have the four, depending on what's happening in the environment,
either economically or with our customers, we're able to deploy capital differently, moveresources around, invest in a differentiated way. And it's great to have those options andthat's what's really come through in this result. Particularly, you notice this time, theInstitutional bank really outperformed. And again, that's a business that ANZ does better thanmost, and a real strength and a point of difference for us. So, it's about how we leverage thatdifferentiation to drive value for our customers and for our shareholders.
BRETT FOLEY: And can we talk about productivity? There have been gains again this year,
but can you elaborate for us on how, and what you're doing with the proceeds?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: Our costs are going up and that's just the reality of banking today. So wehave to work really hard to drive productivity, to be more efficient so that we can deliver ourservices at competitive prices. It's something that ANZ’s getting better and better at. We’ve
been doing this – it didn’t start this year – we've been doing it for the last seven or eightyears. We've driven a lot of productivity gains and we take those gains by getting more
efficient and some of those go back to our shareholders in the form of dividends and others,a lot of it, gets reinvested into the business and that's really what we're able to do again thisANZ Group Holdings Limited
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year. So this year – this half – was a really good, another good result there. And that enabled
us to reinvest that money into growth options for the future.
BRETT FOLEY: Can you give us an example of some of the growth options or where some of
the funds are going?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: In fact, we're spending more in terms of growth investments than we havefor many, many years. We've got, of course, our sort of flagship programs like ANZ Plus,
which is going extraordinarily well. We've obviously got to invest – we’re already investing –into the preparation for the acquisition of Suncorp Bank, which again will be a great addition
to the family. And then we're investing in areas like our Commercial bank, which is a great
opportunity where we service about 650,000 small businesses across Australia – but we needto invest there in terms of technology and people and processes to make sure that we've got
the very, very best propositions out in the market.
BRETT FOLEY: And just staying on ANZ Plus for a minute – how is it progressing? It seems
like it's becoming a much more integrated part of the bank.
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: Yeah, look, I'm really excited about where we are with ANZ Plus. I mean
already today we've got over 650,000 customers, who have chosen to come on to the Plus
platform. It’s got about $13 billion in deposits. That's already more than 8 per cent of all of
our Retail bank deposits sitting on our Plus platform, and that's in a couple of years fromlaunch as a start-up. So it’s really going well. 47 per cent of our customers in Plus areengaging with the platform in one of the financial wellbeing features, which really is what
underpins the Plus proposition. So it’s really exciting, it's great to see growth, it's great to see
the customers react so positively to it. Most importantly, we've built it as a platform thatallows us to continually roll out new features and functionality, and it's just great to be able
to start to see those things coming to fruition now and our customers really embracing themand using them.
BRETT FOLEY: One other major issue for big companies is cybersecurity and scams and fraud.
Can you tell us a little about what ANZ’s doing to help keep customers safe?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: This year we’re 196 years old as an organisation, and right from day one,
we've been in the security business – that's what banks do. Our prime responsibility is tosecure the money of our customers, whether that's in deposits or whatever. It's what we doevery day when we wake up in the morning – think about how do we keep the bank safe. Andof course, the way we do that has changed a lot. We have to keep it safe from criminals interms of cyber hackers and people who try to come in and attack our systems. And we also
now have to help keep our customers’ money safe from scammers, which is a terrible scourgeon the community. And we've all seen the numbers and we all know somebody who's beenscammed. And so we have a responsibility there, so we spend hundreds of millions of dollars
in terms of cybersecurity and making sure that our systems are safe, but we’re also spending
a lot of money in terms of giving tools and education to customers to protect them from scams
and frauds. A lot of that’s been built into areas like ANZ Plus, which we talked a little bit about,but, also just more broadly. Now the good news is that while the numbers are still way too
high and people are still sadly losing money to these criminal gangs, the numbers are starting
to move in the right direction. And so, we’ve still got a lot more work to do and we willcontinue to invest appropriately – with the industry and on our own – to really improve thesituation for our customers.

BRETT FOLEY: Turning to the external environment now, there's still a lot of uncertainty out
there. So how do you see conditions for the rest of the year and how are customers faring
with higher rates and cost of living challenges?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: So clearly there are very real stresses in the economy. I mean interest
rates have risen a lot relatively quickly. People are paying more tax because of bracket creep,
and of course things like rents, and food and groceries, have been increasing at a pretty rapidrate. So there's clearly stress, and we can see that, we can see that in the broader data.
Having said that, the reality is that banks – and ANZ – are in a really strong position to help
those customers that do find themselves in a difficult position. And when we look into thedata and say, well, how many of our people – how many of our customers – are calling in andsaying, “Hey, I need help,” those numbers are still remarkably low. Now, that's a dreadfulsituation for those people to be in, and we do everything we can to assist them. But when
you stand back and think about the bigger picture, the numbers are still very, very low. Andin fact, they're much lower than they were even before COVID. So you sort of go back tomore recent normal times. You might ask yourself, well, “How can that be? You know, I'mhearing about all the stress and cost of living — it really is happening and interest rates havegone up. How can it be?” One of the reasons is that it's actually been really difficult for manycustomers to get a home loan in the first place, or to get a credit card, or to run their business.
Now, there's lots of issues with that, I think about for the broader community and access tocredit, which we can talk about another time. But the flip side of that says that banks’ credit
quality has been really, really strong. And so that means that the people who do have homeloans or who are running their businesses are actually pretty resilient. So they're a little bit
better off than you might think. Just to give you a data point — and I think this is quite asurprising, and not an intuitive number — 79 per cent of ANZ’s home loan customers areahead on their repayments, they're paying more than they need to. That's a remarkable
number, and that number’s higher than it was a year ago. So despite all of that, the people
with a home loan out there, which is about a third of all Australians, are actually still, not justpaying their home loans, but getting ahead. So it tells you that despite stress, there's still
resilience, that people are very prudent in the way that they manage their money, and people
are getting through. But as I said, we would expect the number of people under stress toincrease. Those interest rates will — are — continuing to hurt. So you'd expect there tocontinue to be a slowdown and there will be, we will see, more customers get into stress. And
that's why having a strong bank like us who's able to lean in, who has the resources to beable to help where we can, is so important.
BRETT FOLEY: You touched on it earlier, but we can't let you go without asking about Suncorp
Bank — what's the latest there?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: We're making progress. I mean, these things take time. We're reallypleased we got the Tribunal's approval. There's still a couple more steps to go through. We
need the Queensland Government to pass some legislation, which they're on track to do andthey’ve been nothing but supportive of this transaction and we thank them for that. And thenit has to go to the Federal Treasurer. That'll take place over the coming months. All going
well, we'd be looking at maybe getting to a completion of final approval sometime in thecalendar third quarter. But there's still steps and still a lot of work to go through. Once weget there, we'll be in a position then to update the market on what our plans will be and how
we bring in the Suncorp Bank 1.2 million customers into the ANZ fold.
BRETT FOLEY: Shayne, thanks very much for your time.
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: Thank you.

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