2008 Corporate Responsibility performance summaries - Corporate Responsibility

Goal: Achieve our targets for our women in management.

Progress: Overall, the percentage of women in management positions at ANZ remains the same as last year at 37%. We exceeded our three-year targets for women at Executive and Senior Manager levels in New Zealand and while we have achieved year-on-year increases in Australia, we fell short of our targets.

Significant developments in 2008 included the appointment of three women who direct reports to our CEO while 27% of Executive positions in our newly-formed Asia Pacific Division are held by women.

Performance:

Goal: Close the gap on pay differential between men and women at all levels of the organisation.

Progress: We are making good progress in closing the pay differential between men and women at ANZ. A bias towards males remains at the most senior levels of the organisation, where men tend to hold more senior positions within a wage band.

Goal: Reduce our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) by a further 20% in Australia and New Zealand and report performance globally.

Progress: We continue to focus on reducing our LTIFR - a standard measure of the effectiveness of occupational health and safety programs - achieving a record low in Australia. LTIFR in Australia has reduced from 3.0 in September 2007 to 2.4 at the same time in 2008, achieving a 20% reduction for the year. The LTIFR claims rate for Australia is 1.4.

LTIFR in New Zealand has gone from 1.6 to 2.0, a 26% increase. An external audit will review relevant reporting systems and confirm the accuracy of the data to assist in setting an appropriate target for 2009. Initial investigations suggest improved awareness and understanding of Occupational Health and Safety management systems over the past year have resulted in more comprehensive reporting of Lost Time Injuries.

Performance:

Goal: Improve our performance in the ANZ Engagement and Culture Census.

Progress: Our annual Engagement and Culture Census revealed employee engagement to be stable at 62% against 64% in 2007. Our score compares favourably with the average engagement score for global financial services companies (at 60%) according to research conducted by Hewitt Associates.

We have identified key focus areas to address issues and opportunities raised by our employees in the Census and have developed action plans for improving employee engagement.

Performance:

Goal: Employ 100 Indigenous Australians, as part of our Indigenous Employment strategy.

Progress: We have recruited 106 Indigenous trainees in 2008. This recruitment program is one of the practical steps we are taking to improve the social and economic inclusion of Indigenous Australians.

Performance:

Goal: Continue to improve our retail customer satisfaction and match the performance of community and regional banks.

Progress: Our retail customer satisfaction marginally decreased from 77.2% in September 2007 to 77.1% in September 2008 according to Roy Morgan Finance Monitor. Our customers remain the most satisfied of all major banks in Australia. A decline in customer satisfaction by the leading regional competitor, has reduced the gap over ANZ from 15.4 points in September 2007 to 8.7 points in September 2008.

Performance:

Goal: Meet or exceed the performance standards set out in our Customer Charter and conduct a review of its commitments.

Progress: We met or exceeded 25 of 29 service commitments set out in our Customer Charter, covering retail service such as call waiting and branch queue times, complaints handling and responsible lending practices.

Highlights included:

• We achieved 87.4% overall customer satisfaction rating for our customer service in branches, compared to 77.3% in 2007.
• Customers rated their overall satisfaction 8.2 out of 10 for our communications via letters, statements, brochures, ATM and website messages.

We experienced two breaches related to our responsible lending commitments this year. A system change made in February resulted in 1316 customers being offered Credit Limit Increases that breached our guidelines. Also, during a Platinum credit card upgrade campaign in July, the process to remove certain categories of customers from receiving the Credit Limit Increase offer (with the Platinum upgrade offer) was not performed. A total of 737 customers were affected by this breach.

We reviewed and subsequently enhanced our processes with additional filters and sign-offs to address the cause of these breaches.

Performance: 

Goal: Implement a new Personal Division policy and processes to assist retail customers facing financial difficulty.

Progress: We introduced Customer Connect, a new program designed to give retail customers in financial difficulty repayment flexibility to help them manage their money during periods of financial instability and get back on track as quickly as possible.

Performance:

Goal: Maintain our position as the Number 1 Lead Bank for major Corporate and Institutional clients.

Progress: We retained our Number 1 Lead Bank ranking in the 2008 Peter Lee Associates Large Corporate and Institutional Relationship Banking Survey.

Performance:

Goal: Achieve Equator Principles reporting for 100% of ANZ's Project Finance transactions.

Progress: An Equator Principles assessment is now required for all Project Finance transactions regardless of their size or location. This year we reviewed 100% of Project Finance proposals for social and environmental impact under the Equator Principles (EPs). Of these, 73% have so far been financed. Seventy-five per cent of Project Finance employees in Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore have received Equator Principles training.

Performance: 

Goal: Implement Institutional social and environmental lending policies for forests, mining, energy and water.

Progress: We introduced new social and environmental policies to guide our Institutional lending decisions in the Forestry, Mining, Energy and Water sectors and these are currently being implemented across our business. The policies were developed in consultation with our business, clients, government and NGOs and apply to new and existing clients.

Performance:

Goal: Release ANZ's bi-annual financial literacy research.

Progress: We conducted and released our third, bi-annual research into adult financial literacy in Australia. The results continue to show a strong link between low levels of financial literacy and socio-economic disadvantage.

Performance:

Goal: Meet our financial literacy and inclusion program targets;

• enable 1,500 people to participate in Saver Plus
• reach 30,000 people through MoneyMinded
• achieve 300 Progress Loans participants

Progress: ANZ's Saver Plus matched savings and financial literacy program is now running in 20 locations around Australia with 1,585 new participants enrolled this year. Research conducted by RMIT University marking five years since its commencement assessed Saver Plus shows 70% of participants are still saving the same amount or more two to three years after completing the program.

MoneyMinded reached more than 33,000 people in Australia and New Zealand this year. New topics for Superannuation, Home Ownership, Tenancy and Investment Basics were launched to further enhance the resource.

We provided 322 Progress Loans to low-income earners through our community partner, the Brotherhood of St Laurence.

Performance:

Goal: Achieve 70,000 hours of staff volunteering across the Group and 15% participation in payroll giving

Progress: Our people around the world contributed more than 79,600 volunteering hours this year. Employees volunteer as teams and individuals for charities and causes that are important to them.
Fifteen per cent or 3,400 employees together contributed more than $600,000, matched by ANZ, via our payroll giving program.

Performance:

Goal: Achieve the commitments in our Reconciliation Action Plan including staff training, financial literacy and assisting to build the capacity of Indigenous organisations

Progress: We have achieved or made excellent progress on all of the 21 original commitments in our Reconciliation Action Plan. The Plan aims to increase employment opportunities, improve financial literacy and inclusion, develop better understanding of Indigenous cultures and help to build the capacity of Indigenous communities and organisations throughout Australia.

This year, in addition to achieving our Indigenous employment targets, we commenced a mutual mentoring program. Senior ANZ employees have been matched with Indigenous leaders to exchange ideas, experience and skills. Our report on Indigenous Home Ownership was published in August, committing us to improving the level of Indigenous home ownership in Australia.

Performance:

Goal: Work towards our two-year goals to:

• achieve a 5% reduction in electricity and water usage per FTE
• achieve a 10% reduction in paper purchased and waste to landfill per FTE
• become carbon neutral in Australia and New Zealand by the end of 2009

Progress: We have made a solid start in achieving our two-year targets to reduce our environmental footprint in Australia. We are on track to achieve a 5% reduction in electricity and water consumption per FTE, as well as our 10% reduction in paper. There is still considerable work required to achieve our goal to reduce waste to landfill by 10% by the end of 2009.

• Electricity consumption per FTE has reduced by 4%
• Water consumption per FTE has reduced by 11%
• Paper consumption per FTE has reduced by 6%
• Waste to landfill per FTE has increased by 5%

We have developed a business plan examining options to achieve carbon neutrality in Australia and New Zealand by end 2009.

ANZ was also announced as a Member of the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index by the Carbon Disclosure Project for the third successive year.

Performance:

Goal: Increase the number of suppliers undergoing detailed social and environmental screening by 50%

Progress: We completed social and environmental screenings for 77 suppliers against our target of 53* in Australia and New Zealand. This takes the total number of ANZ suppliers screened since 2004 to 239. Information provided from this screening is being used by ANZ Relationship Managers to minimise areas of significant risk.

Performance:

Goal: Ensure sustainability clauses are included in 100% of tenders issued by our Sourcing Alliances team

Progress: All ANZ contracts negotiated as a consequence of tender processes this year have included sustainability clauses. Our sustainability clauses require suppliers to either complete a social and environmental self-assessment annually or meet the minimum requirements set out in our Supplier Sustainability Code of Practice.

Performance:

Goal: Review our sustainable procurement policy, develop sector-specific social and environmental standards for our suppliers and audit suppliers' performance against these standards

Progress: We updated ANZ's Sustainable Procurement Policy and released new social and environmental guidelines for the procurement of IT goods and services and motor vehicles. We did not complete an audit of supplier performance against these standards.

An internal assessment of supplier compliance conducted this year will be used in the development of a pilot audit process for selecting suppliers in 2009.

Performance:

Goal: Examine how best to build relevant social and environmental criteria into joint venture due diligence processes

Progress: We used the OECD Guidelines for Multi-National Enterprises to develop a framework for incorporating social and environmental criteria into our due diligence processes for joint ventures. This approach has been reviewed and approved by our Asia Pacific Reputation Risk Committee and will now be piloted.

Performance:

Goal: Achieve Disability Action Plan employment and banking access targets

Progress: We achieved or made good progress on all of the 29 commitments set out in our Disability Action Plan.

Significant developments include:

• We introduced audio enabled queue waiting ticketing machines in our branches and audio enabled an additional 323 ATMS, bringing the total to 2,123 or 85% of our network.
• We adapted nine of our most commonly used product documents for customers for Braille, large print and audio CD format. Four of these are also accessible online in electronic text and audio MP3 format.
• We worked with Vision Australia to ensure our MoneyMinded online financial literacy courses complied with W3C accessibility standards for people with Vision Impairment.
• We employed three graduates for our 2009 intake who self-identified as having a disability and established relationships with agencies that specialise in recruiting people with disability.
• We contributed to the development of the Federal Government's National Mental Health and Disability Employment Strategy discussion paper. Our submission and recommendations drew on the experiences and insights of ANZ employees with disabilities and their managers.

ANZ's Diversity Council has also endorsed a new disability employment strategy including an internal target to employ a further 35 people with disabilities in 2009.

Performance: