ANZ’s chief executive has blamed customers for bank branch closures as he revealed the staggering number that had been shut in just six years.
Under Shayne Elliott’s watch, the number of ANZ branches across Australia has plunged by 42 per cent from 678 in 2017 to 391 now.
Of those still operating, 250 are in big cities, compared with 75 in inner-regional areas, 47 in outer regional towns and 19 in remote locations.
Mr Elliott, who was last year paid $6million, told a parliamentary hearing customers complained about bank branch closures but then did almost all their transactions online.
‘What we’ve found is – and again, I don’t mean to diminish the feedback – but a lot of people bemoan the fact that branches are closing but they don’t actually use them,’ he told the House of Representatives economics committee in Canberra on Wednesday.
‘And even when we do provide alternative solutions, the usage is extraordinarily low because people actually do like the convenience of being able to do things digitally.’
ANZ’s chief executive has blamed customers for bank branch closures. Under Shayne Elliott’s watch, the number of ANZ branches across Australia has plunged by 42 per cent from 678 in 2017 to 391 now (he is pictured fronting the House of Representatives economics committee in Canberra)
Mr Elliott, who took over as CEO in 2016, argued the rate of closure was faster earlier in his leadership, pointing out only 35 branches had closed since 2021 as 96 per cent of customers did their transactions digitally.
‘Only eight per cent of our customers only use a branch and don’t have any sort of digital relationship with us,’ he said.
‘That is falling at a rapid rate.
‘Most of them are actually more likely to be small business operators, small businesses have more complex needs than individuals.
‘Retail customers are generally pretty well serviced on a digital basis.’
The Kiwi-born banking veteran argued a New Zealand experiment, where major banks shared a branch to save on costs, had not worked, but said ANZ could install more smart automatic teller machines that accepted cash deposits.
‘Part of the solution is ATMs, again it’s not the same but we have smart ATMs, they take deposits, dispense cash, and coin machines and all sorts of things that the industry and ourselves invest in to try and make it as smooth as possible,’ Mr Elliott said.
He also stressed most branch closures had happened in city centres, using downtown Melbourne as an example.
‘Most of the closure has actually happened in major cities,’ he said.
‘It’s your classic Collins Street where we would have had five branches in the past, now we have three.
He also stressed most branch closures had happened in city centres, using downtown Melbourne as an example (pictured is an ATM in Victoria)
‘That’s where the bulk has been. There’s been essentially no closures in remote or very remote Australia and regional somewhere in the middle.
‘It’s responding to what customers are doing.’
Mr Elliott said regional areas were harder to service but suggested remote branches could stay open if they operated on just morning hours.
‘Remote towns, part of the country, are difficult to service in general whether that’s banking or supermarkets or petrol stations or whatever it might be,’ he said.
‘From a banking perspective, we are fortunate in the fact that generally we provide all those services in an alternative way, as long as there’s good internet connection or telephone service.’
But he admitted customers, even if they mainly did their transactions online, were still attached to a physical branch.
‘We look at a number of things: yes, we look at the foot traffic, we look at the number of customers that will consider that branch their home, their home branch and we look at the total relationship value that we have with them,’ he said.
‘Whether they use the branch or now, everybody is attached to a branch and we think about the network that branch supports, the number of conversations that people are having, not just transactions or over the counter are clearly very important but also the general interaction and usage of that branch.
‘At some point, it gets to a point where based on the data, we make a decision about keeping it open.’
