CEO'S MESSAGE: ANZ 2024 Annual Report

After a record performance in 2023, this year was another pivotal year for our company.

We completed the successful acquisition of Suncorp Bank, setting us up for future success. We also achieved strong results from our core banking business and saw emerging benefits from our investments in key customer platforms – ANZ Plus and Transactive Global.

Our results demonstrate the benefits of multiple years of simplification, strengthening of the balance sheet and targeted investment into market-leading platforms which better support our customers, while producing sustainable returns for our shareholders and positioning us well for the future.

As the Chairman has covered extensively, this year issues arose in our Markets business, which have been extremely disappointing as they are contrary to our requirements and the standards we have set for ourselves.

This has reinforced how critical it is to ensure we have an engaged and purpose-led culture across ANZ. While our employee engagement score remained industry leading in 2024, I acknowledge there is always more to be done to embed a strong speak-up culture with a deep understanding of non-financial risk. As CEO of ANZ, this is a key priority.

The Bank We Bought – Suncorp Bank

On 1 August 2024, we welcomed approximately 3,000 Suncorp Bank employees, 1.2 million customers and $54.6 billion of deposits into the ANZ family.

The quality of the business is already exceeding our expectations.

In the two years since announcing the acquisition, Suncorp Bank’s customer numbers, home lending and deposits have all grown.

As we learn more about the quality of Suncorp Bank’s business, people and assets, we are increasingly confident that we are well placed to deliver more synergies than expected, faster than initially planned. We will share more detail of our aspirations at our first half results in 2025.

We have always positioned our acquisition of Suncorp Bank as a platform for growth in Queensland and that is why we were happy to make commitments to the Queensland Government with regards to lending and jobs.

We have already demonstrated momentum in meeting these commitments, with recent announcements including financing for Queensland’s largest affordable housing project for seniors and people with disability.

We are establishing a new technology hub in Brisbane focused on digital, cloud and data capability, which will employ more than 700 people over the next five years.

Our focus now is to drive value from the acquisition, combining the best of ANZ and Suncorp Bank to create one bank that’s better together for customers, colleagues, shareholders and the community.

The Bank we’re Building

Throughout the year, we continued to deliver propositions to support our customers built on resilient, agile platforms which can innovate at pace. These platforms provide the underlying technology infrastructure that drives the business.

This was possible due to the investment of about $2.5 billion over the past five years to improve our technical capabilities and capacity to speed up delivery. This provides more seamless and secure banking experiences that deliver better customer outcomes and ultimately grow market share and profitability.

This includes ANZ Plus, which we believe is the most engaging, contemporary and easy to use retail banking platform in Australia. ANZ Plus customer numbers grew 85% through the year to nearly 850,000, and deposits grew 70% to almost $16 billion.

Nearly one in five of our active retail customers now call ANZ Plus home. We continue to acquire around 30,000 customers onto the ANZ Plus platform every month and pleasingly, 48% of customers who joined ANZ Plus in FY24 were new to ANZ.

In line with our strategy to improve the financial wellbeing of customers, almost half of all ANZ Plus customers are using a financial wellbeing feature such as round-ups, and more than a third have set and are actively working towards a savings goal.

Another great example of how the technology ANZ Plus is built on allows us to launch market-first features safely, quickly and at low cost, was the launch of MyAccounts. This was the first time a major Australian bank has leveraged open banking technology to give customers a consolidated view of their eligible accounts across different Australian financial institutions.

Other recent new ANZ Plus features include the introduction of joint accounts, home loan offsets and the ability to import billers and payees from our existing ANZ app.

We also integrated more partnerships into the ANZ Plus app: Qantas Frequent Flyer points, which was an Australian first, and Cashrewards, our 100%-owned, leading cashback provider in Australia. This comes at a time when many customers are looking to make their dollar go further.

These features enhance our customers’ experience while also helping lay the foundations to make it easier and safer to migrate our existing customers to ANZ Plus, starting in 2025.

We have also invested significantly in the Institutional business, in particular our payments and cash management platform, Transactive Global, which supports institutional and commercial customers with advanced transaction banking services, including to help them manage and move money globally.

This positioned us to be at the forefront of innovation including PayTo real-time payments services, while also piloting real-time cross-border payments into Australia.

As a result, Coalition Greenwich ranked ANZ #1 in Transaction Banking product development and innovation in Australia this year, and we were named Best Bank for Payments globally by Global Finance Magazine.

Our Institutional Division now generates much of its income from low-risk processing businesses, and in 2024 achieved record revenue, record profit before provisions, and record return on equity.

Supporting our customers

Our platforms, ANZ Plus and Transactive Global, not only improve our customers’ experience and reduce costs, they also help protect our customers from scams and fraud.

ANZ Plus has introduced a raft of scam safe features including screen share protection from scammers, locationbased security, risky-app detection, crypto limits and the use of technology to help detect if customers are being coached from scammers.

In addition, we have increased personalised internet banking warning messages when activity is considered high risk and introduced a new Scam Scoring model which uses Artificial Intelligence to complement our security systems and boost scam detection.

Combined with increased education and resources – including a new team of dedicated fraud and scam specialists – these measures are having an impact. In 2024, our people and systems stopped more than $140 million being sent to criminals.

Helping customers who may be facing financial difficulty as early as possible is another key priority.

In Australia, while customers can reach out to us if they need help, we also proactively check in via SMS with hundreds of customers a month who are potentially facing financial hardship.

In line with the broader economic environment, the number of Australian home loan and small business customers in hardship has risen over the past year. However, this is off an historically low base and the overall data suggests that in aggregate, customers are holding up better than originally expected. That said, where customers are in difficulty we will work with them to find a solution tailored to their situation.

Supporting the community

Supporting our communities is core to our purpose, which is to shape a world where people and communities thrive.

Our financial education and matched savings program, Saver Plus, celebrated its 21st birthday this year, making it the largest and longest running program of its kind in the world. The program was developed alongside Brotherhood of St Laurence and is delivered in partnership with Berry Street and The Smith Family, with funding support from the Australian Government and ANZ.

In that time, more than 62,000 participants have built lifelong savings habits while saving more than $31 million. Over the same period, ANZ has provided more than $26 million in matched funds.

This program has been life changing for many, with the vast majority of those taking part still saving more than seven years after completion, while their total assets have increased.

Likewise, our flagship financial education program MoneyMinded, which supports adults on lower incomes to build their financial skills, knowledge and confidence, also continues to flourish. Over a million people have taken part since 2002 across Australia, Asia, the Pacific and New Zealand.

Our outlook and piroirities

Looking ahead, we will remain focused on running the bank well. This will be driven by our purpose and focused on delivering good customer outcomes, as well as strengthening risk management and providing consistent financial returns to shareholders.

We will continue to simplify our business to focus on two key platforms, ANZ Plus and Transactive Global. This will help us better serve our customers, manage costs, improve productivity and unlock further benefits of simplification.

We will also leverage Generative AI to increase productivity and deliver better tools to support our people and customers, including through our new AI Immersion Centre launched in partnership with Microsoft earlier this year. As I look ahead, I am confident our diversified portfolio, unique global network, and fortress balance sheet mean we are well positioned to continue to deliver for our shareholders, our people and our community.

Finally, I thank the team at ANZ for their commitment to supporting our customers, which has

Shayne Elliott is Chief Executive Officer of ANZ.