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ANZ is rapidly moving towards a digital-first strategy, according to Elliott, with the bank last month launching digital home loans as part of its ANZ Plus offering, which he said reduced the time and cost of assessing, approving and settling loans.
“In only 18 months since launching, ANZ Plus has attracted almost $11 billion in deposits and around 550,000 customers, with more than 40 per cent new to ANZ,” he said.
Elliott said the group’s revenue was increasingly driven by its payments and currency processing businesses, which processes about 60 per cent of all money flowing into Australia and New Zealand.
“We facilitate an incredible $164 trillion in payments in, out, and around the markets in which we operate every year,” he said. “Most of that is cross-border payments, leveraging the strength of our international network.”
The AGM was briefly disrupted early in the proceedings by climate protestors dressed as clowns. Throughout the meeting, the bank was questioned about its climate policy, including its decision to continue lending to companies with intentions of expanding their fossil-fuel projects.
O’Sullivan said ANZ had been transparent about its relatively large oil and gas exposures, and that it made the bank’s role in the energy transition “all the more important”.
“We were also the first Australian bank to join the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and commit to transition our lending portfolio to net-zero financed emissions by 2050,” he said.
“This year we expanded these commitments to include 2030 pathways and targets for thermal coal and transport.”
O’Sullivan also addressed shareholder concern about his role as chair at Optus, which this year had a major outage.
“I apologise unreservedly to anybody who was affected by the outage,” he said. “I’m not really in the day-to-day chain of command at Optus, but clearly I have responsibilities. I’m not absolving myself of involvement.”
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