ANZ committed to investments and funds management

ANZ says it is still working with Mercer and Blackrock to see what expertise it can tap into.

Tuesday, November 14th 2023, 9:52AM

The bank earlier this year announced it had signed non-binding memorandums of understanding with the two firms to see what expertise it could tap into.

ANZ chief executive Antonia Watson says the bank isn’t looking to exit its funds management and investment business.

“We are very committed to that business, it’s a really important part of our customers’ financial wellbeing journey in terms of both saving for their retirement and saving for their first home, so it fits beautifully in the banking portfolio.”

“Whilst we are a very, very large investor from a New Zealand sense, we’re the largest private investor in New Zealand, we’re still pretty small on a global scale and there are big global players that can help us make sure that we are a best practice investor.

“We’re working with both those global experts who’ve got different areas of expertise to see at the moment, no decisions are being made, but to see how they might be able to help us in the future,” she says.

Under the memos ANZ is exploring areas like international partners and technology. “We’ve got some scale, if we’re wanting to implement technology of our own on our own premises or develop it ourselves, we’re just not really big enough and we’ve got those experts that have fantastic technology out there, so it’s partly looking at our technology as well.”

Watson says there is no deadline on these discussions. “We need to make sure that we do a good job of developing what partnerships we might choose to have out of it.”

Tags: ANZ

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