The promise of data-led business has moved from theory to reality during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott, as corporates embraced the opportunities of digital.
Speaking with ANZ Managing Director, Institutional Australia & PNG Tammy Medard on video, Elliott said insight is a powerful tool as businesses navigate the COVID environment, no matter what sector they are in.
“And a lot of that insight today comes from data,” he said. “And what's remarkable is, in the last few years, we've sort moved from theory to reality in terms of the data opportunity.”
“It was always theoretically possible we would have all this data and have it at our fingertips. But the cost of technology and data imperfection [held us back]”, he said. “Of course, now it is real.”
You can watch part two of the two-part conversation between Elliott and Medard on video below. Part one is here.
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Listening to customers
The Peter Lee Associates Large Corporate and Institutional Relationship Banking Survey is an annual leading indicator of performance across wholesale banking in Australia. The survey is something ANZ “takes very seriously,” Elliott said, as it “informs our prioritisation, our investment slate and things we think about for the future.
The 2022 Peter Lee Large Corporate Relationship and Transaction Banking survey will be going into field soon. Almost 600 Australian-based large businesses and financial institutions with significant annual turnover have been selected to share their views on the performance of domestic banks and their major international peers. Only companies that meet the criteria are selected as survey respondents.
ANZ Institutional was ranked the top bank for outright and lead-bank penetration in Australia for the sixth year in a row in 2021. The bank was also ranked number one for pandemic-related support, with 80 per cent of describing ANZ’s support as ‘excellent’ or ‘above average’.
Medard said the bank spends “a lot of time reading through the anonymous responses” from the survey, before “funding projects and improvements… based on the insights provided from our customers”.
ANZ “actively uses” Peter Lee data to invest in ways to either close the gaps the survey suggests exist between ANZ and its competitors, or to strengthen the areas the survey suggests it has an advantage, Elliott said.
“We really want to understand how we can do a better job where we are not doing a good job, or where we are missing or exceeding customer expectations,” he said.
Medard said ANZ understood the demand for data from its customers, due largely to responses from the Peter Lee survey.
“They want that access to data, they want the insights from their bankers,” she said, often “at the touch of a finger”.
“And that's why surveys like Peter Lee are so important to banks and certainly to ANZ,” Medard said.