BEHIND THE NUMBERS: Retail banking reaches for the skies

Back in 2020, when we first began revealing our new retail banking platform – ANZ Plus – we likened it to the construction of a skyscraper. 

“ANZ Plus will become the bedrock of the division as we begin to migrate existing ANZ customers to this improved digital platform in coming years.”

At the time we’d been working on the foundations for the previous few years and the building was beginning to emerge from the ground. 

Fast forward two years and, not only has the building reached further towards the sky, but the skyscraper is filled with customers who are drawn to a whole string of new services and financial wellbeing propositions. 

While the ANZ Plus skyscraper is still only half built, it is far enough along for customers and bankers to see how exciting our new home will be. 

There’s been continued growth in customer numbers and deposits and ANZ Plus continues to increase its contribution to financial results, which were announced today. 

Australia Retail is one of ANZ’s four key divisions and in the year to September 30 it contributed about 29 per cent of revenue. 
 
ANZ Plus is a crucial and growing part of Australia Retail. Deposits increased 70 per cent to about $16 billion at the end of the 2024 financial year – comprising a growing 9 per cent of the bank’s total deposit base. 

And customer numbers grew 84 per cent to nearly 850,000 in the 2024 financial year – just under half of those customers who joined this year were new to ANZ. What’s also striking is the demographic of these customers. The biggest group by age is under 25 years old.  

But more than just numbers, this new ANZ custom-built platform is a great example of how building and scaling brings benefits across our businesses. 

The productivity benefits to the ANZ group continue to grow as well. Because of the ease of onboarding and digital functionality, the cost to ANZ to acquire new customers is about 45 per cent less than the rest of our retail business. 

And the cost to service those customers is on average about 35 per cent less than regular ANZ customers. 

ANZ Plus will become the bedrock of the division as we begin to migrate existing ANZ customers to this improved digital platform in coming years. 

Financial wellbeing 

The customers already on ANZ Plus are actively taking to its new features, which are aligned with our strategy to improve the financial wellbeing of our customers. 

Almost half of customers are using a financial wellbeing feature on the ANZ Plus platform and about a third of them have a savings goal – everything from travel to saving for a house or car to putting money aside for a rainy day. And the biggest age group of customers using this function is, again, those under 25 years old. 

Customers have also been using the Round Ups function, which is a helpful form of passive saving. It allows customers to automatically round up eligible card purchases to the nearest $1, $2, $5 or $10 and transfer those funds to their savings account. More than $12 million has already been squirrelled away by customers since the feature was introduced.  

Technology first 

Because of the way ANZ Plus has been built as a completely new technology stack, new updates and features can be added all the time. This year we’ve added joint accounts and a string of new home loan extensions. 
 
Another good example is using Open Banking technology to give customers more visibility of all their accounts in one place. While ANZ customers have been about to share their data “out” for a number of years, in September we launched ‘My Accounts’ an industry leading feature which allows customers to see a consolidated view of their bank accounts held with ANZ, ANZ Plus and other Australian financial institutions, all from within the ANZ Plus app. 

This was a first for a big four Australian bank and is important as research indicates almost half of all Australians are a customer of two or more banks. My Accounts provides a safe way for customers to see all their financial information in one place. This will make understanding and managing their money easier and help them get on top of their finances. 

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Importantly, by using Open Banking customers won’t be asked to share their passwords from other banks or third-party providers when sharing their data with ANZ Plus. 

And customers are responding. Since it became available last month, already thousands of customers are using the feature. 

In the broader context of the Australian market, this represents about 12 per cent share of total Open Banking application usage across the banking sector – a stellar result after just six weeks or so. 

Safety and security 

A key priority for us is to ensure our customers’ data and funds are secure. To that end, a new suite of safety measures called `Scam Safe’ were introduced almost six months ago including screen share protect, active call status, geo-location, risky app detection and crypto protect.  

Already more than 66,000 customers have engaged with these features within the app and 99.2 per cent have either retained the default scam safe protections or added to them. 

Our figures tell us customers who have these features are on average 25 times less likely to be a scam victim than if those Scam Safe protections were removed. Importantly we have seen a 140 per cent decrease in customer losses to crypto currency as a result of these enhanced protections. 

We are still building our home loan offering and preparing to broaden the proposition to more Australians in the coming year. Already this year we’ve launched home loan offsets and a cash out option, which allows customers to access equity in their homes for improvements or other lifestyle expenses. 

Next year we’ll be expanding from refinancing to people looking to purchase a home with a loan for the first time. It will also be available for investor loan refinancings.  

And more customers are taking the opportunity to interact with our highly trained coaches to help with everything from building savings habits to finding ways to spend less and save more. In a single week last month more than 11,000 customers connected with and were supported by our ANZ Plus coaches. 

Finally, with the successful acquisition of Suncorp Bank earlier this year, we look forward to welcoming about 1.2 million customers on to the ANZ Plus platform in the future.  

Retail banking continues to undergo a fascinating evolution as digital technology plays an ever-growing role in how we do our banking. 

The investment in ANZ Plus sets us up to deliver these new services more easily to customers as their expectations change with the times. We look forward to welcoming more Australians as the skyscraper continues to grow. 

Maile Carnegie is Group Executive, Australia Retail at ANZ.