News Release
For Release: 30 April 2020

Transcript of bluenotes video interview with ANZ Chief
Executive Officer Shayne Elliott
ANDREW CORNELL: Morning Shayne, thanks very much for joining us again on bluenotes inquite extraordinary circumstances. Normally at these results we talk through the March half
and touch on the post balance date outlook but these are extraordinary times indeed sowhat do these numbers actually tell us?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: Yes it’s a good point and good morning Andrew. These are extraordinary
times and in fact they are probably the most extraordinary times in a generation. And you’reright we normally sit there and talk at some length about what the results mean in terms ofour core business. But clearly everybody’s focus this time is really about the future and how
do we enter that?
So really what these numbers tell us is that ANZ enters into this crisis in the best possible
shape. You know our core businesses are performing well, our capital levels are strong, ourliquidity levels are strong and that really should give a lot of optimism and confidence about
our ability to stand up and do the right thing by our customers, but also the broader
economy and that’s the real message here. Now we don’t know what the future holds there
is an enormous amount of uncertainty but we’re in very good shape to be able to deal withthat uncertainty.
ANDREW CORNELL: Now the uncertainty really is no surprise given what we’ve seen andwhat’s happened with some other banks but the dividend decision will come as a shock.
What do you mean when you say the decision on the dividend will be deferred?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: Right so, given the extraordinary level of uncertainty and the potential
impacts that will have right across the economy, the Board took a very prudent decision tosay ‘now is just not the right time to be making such a huge decision’, let’s not forget the
impact of making a dividend at the moment is, it’s a couple of billion dollars. That’s anenormous decision to be making and so the board felt, that it was not the right time to be
doing that and you may recall that actually only recently APRA, our regulator had written to
all large financial institutions and expressed a similar view that said ‘given what’s happening
in the world, given what’s happening in Australia, this probably isn’t the best time to be
making that kind of decision’. So unlike other regulators that actually put out, in othermarkets put an outright ban on the dividends, APRA just said ‘we want you to think reallyhard about whether this is the right time’. And so our Board actually concurred with that andso we’ve decided to defer the decision about making a dividend until later in the year when
we will have more insight into the economic impacts and the ramifications for the bank.
ANDREW CORNELL: And does that tell us anything about the shape of the bank as we aregoing forward? Should we read anything more into that?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: I don’t think so. I think again to me it shows that the bank will continue
to manage the situation in a very prudent way. We’re here for the long term and it’s in thelong term interests of shareholders that ANZ not only just survives, but actually is well
prepared for whatever situations may come. And so I think it tells you a lot about themindset of a board, about a prudent approach, a conservative approach and an approachthat is really focused on the long term interests of stakeholders.
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited
9/833 Collins Street Docklands Victoria 3008 Australia
ABN 11 005 357 522

ANDREW CORNELL: And indeed there is a tension between supporting customers andgovernment initiatives which the banks, ANZ and other banks are doing, and returns toshareholders. So how do you balance that tension?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: That’s a good question. And that probably is a more pointed tension than
we might normally see in more normal times. But in reality if we stand back and think aboutit, I am not sure that there really is a contention there, they’re actually … there’s a strong
sense of alignment. At the end of the day what is good for our customers is ultimately very
good for ANZ. And given the nature of what we do and the breadth of our operations andthe way that we’re an integral part of the broader economy, what’s good for Australia,
what’s good for New Zealand is good for ANZ so there’s actually a natural alignment ofinterests here. It’s in our interests that customers are able to survive through these
shutdowns. That’s in our interests. It’s in our interests that our customers have thewherewithal to get through and come out the other side in decent shape. That is in theinterests of the economy, that is in the interest of the Government, that is in the interest of
our regulators and it’s absolutely in the interests of our customers and our shareholders.
So there is a strong alignment there and actually one of the highlights, I think – if there issuch a thing in such a dreadful time – is to see the sort of alignment and coordination
amongst the various stakeholders in the economy. And I think that really differentiates theway that the community is dealing with this crisis as opposed to some that we’ve seen in
the past where I think, in hindsight you could argue – and there are people who are moreeducated in this than me – but looking back as far as the great depression, but certainly the
1990 recession in Australia, that in many aspects the regulators and the Governments in
those cases were too slow to lean into this. And there might be many criticisms about theway that this is being handled but I do not believe for a minute that anybody can criticise
the scale of the alignment and coordination from the Government and the private sector andalso the speed at which decisions are being made. So I think that actually is a very goodsign for it, but going to your question there is a strong alignment of interests here.
ANDREW CORNELL: Those support measures whether on the bank side or on the
Government side there’s roughly a six month sunset on a lot of them, so how do you see
these support measures playing out for that six months and perhaps beyond if necessary?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: So a lot of the support measures that we are talking about here are reallyabout buying time and, without overusing the analogy, it is literally about flattening the
curve. What we’re seeing here … what is in nobody’s interest is to see families being put
under immense stress or businesses. And so what we are trying to do here, andGovernment policy and the banks interest, is to flatten the curve of financial stress, to buytime so that people have the time to consider their options and make sure that they canhave the best possible chance of surviving through. And that’s why the banks like ANZ aredeferring, or offering at least, for people who need it, the ability to defer your payments on
your loans if that’s what you need and there’s a whole range of other support packages inthere. Now of course you might at some level say ‘well that’s fine you’re buying time, it’s
not a cure, it’s not a cure for the stress’. But it absolutely buys time just like with the healthcrisis to find a vaccine and the vaccine ultimately in financial terms is to make sure that theeconomy comes out of this in really good shape. So, yes the focus should be on support
packages, flattening the curve of financial failure and now the banks, we’re at ANZ alreadyworking really hard preparing for the rebound. How can we be in a position to allocate
capital, provide loans, support people as they do get back to work and come through this inbetter shape. And that’s exactly the focus of ANZ at the present and that’s why preserving
some of our resources to enable that rebound is so important. And going back to where we
started having financial capacity to do that is so important for a bank and we feel that ANZ
is in the best possible position to be able to fulfil that role as well.
ANDREW CORNELL: And given that position, the starting position, but also given theconsiderable uncertainty here, are you able to give us some kind of outlook for the bankover the foreseeable future and perhaps the shape of the economy?
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: The reality is there is a lot of uncertainty and we need to be prepared forthe worst, sadly. And in a case like this, this is all new. None of us have really experienced,

certainly in our lifetime, a crisis of this nature. Now, on the other hand sadly in banking we
do experience crises actually with some reasonable regularity. They look different and they
have different sources and they transmit differently through the economy. I mean the mostrecent example, obviously is the GFC. But even prior to that we had the Asian financial
crisis, we had the tech wreck in the late 90s, we’ve had the very famous recession here in
the early 90s in Australia, which was quite devastating, we had the ’87 market crash. So
actually banks have learned what works in general around these sorts of crises. All you can
do is be prepared and you sort of have to be extremely pragmatic, being able to makedecisions very, very quickly. And what we do know, what works in these is making sure you
have a lot of liquidity as a bank, making sure that we retain our strength from a liquidity
point of view. Making sure we have a lot of capital. You know, the banks today and ANZ, we
have got three times the amount of capital today that we had when we entered the GFC,
which is only ten years ago, so we’ve enormously strengthened our position. So we don’tknow what the outlook looks like, but we know that we’re more prepared than ever.
And another thing that probably doesn’t get enough discussion, I think, we focus very muchon the financial preparedness, but there’s also a managerial preparedness and a cultural
one. I think that coming through the Royal Commission means that actually banks areprobably more and more attuned to culture and how we behave. We’ve got a realopportunity to show our value to the community here that we can and will do the right thingby customers and that gives us an enormous opportunity. And then at ANZ, I know here
we’ve got enormous management experience and depth; people who have been throughthose crises I referred to before.
So Andrew, I don’t know what the future looks like. We are prepared for a fairly grim
outlook and that’s probably in banking the right thing to do, to be extremely conservative as
you go into things like this. We’ve got a lot of resources to draw on whether they’refinancial, whether they’re managerial, our people, our intellectual resources and justculturally. So we don’t relish this situation, it’s going to be incredibly difficult. A lot of … it’sgoing to be devastating for many people in the community. But we are here, we have acapacity to help, we have the intention to help and I’m very confident that we can play avery significant role in ensuring that all the communities in which we operate can comethrough this in the best possible shape. And that we are ready and able to help people not
only survive through this but actually come out the other side ready to take on thechallenges of the new world that will emerge post-COVID.
ANDREW CORNELL: Well thanks very much for your time Shayne. Good luck, well good luck
to all of us.
SHAYNE ELLIOTT: Thank you.
For media enquiries contact:
Stephen Ries, +61 409 655 551
Nick Higginbottom, +61 403 936 262
Approved for distribution by ANZ’s Continuous Disclosure Committee