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Pictured Customer Dino di Bella and Andrea Gosstray, Shepparton Branch. |
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"We should use our strengths to 'bring to production' concepts that will contribute to sustainability of our society. This could be through finance, leveraging business contacts, facilitation, promotion, finding synergies with our own products with a view to strategic alliances, or even getting directly involved in start-up enterprises."
Inspire ANZ – Alex Byass, Consumer and Business Technologies |
Our commitment to improving financial literacy and inclusion must extend to providing a range of simple, accessible mainstream banking products for a variety of different customers.
Three years ago we streamlined our Access transaction accounts in response to customer feedback that our product range was too complex. Today, Access Advantage - an 'all you can eat' account providing an unlimited number of ANZ transactions for $5 per month; and Access Select - a 'pay as you go' account with no monthly fee and up to six free ANZ transactions per month; are award winning accounts and have been recognised by independent financial services research company, Cannex with five-star ratings.
Our Community Banking package provides concessions including no monthly account fees and unlimited free transactions to seniors, students, young people, disabled people and benefit recipients.
While we have made good progress, a recent third-party review revealed that we have more work to do to simplify our core products, services and customer communication, and ensure these are marketed responsibly.
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We aim to market our products and services responsibly and in a way that allows the costs and benefits to be clearly understood by our customers.
Our underlying principle is to lend only to customers who have the ability to service and repay a loan. We have a range of policies to determine a customer's credit worthiness and ability to make repayments. This includes assessment calculations to ensure customers will be able to repay a loan not only at today's interest rate, but also in the event of an interest rate rise.
We have also taken steps to ensure our lending behaviour is aligned with community expectations, taking into account feedback from financial counsellors who deal with people facing financial difficulty every day.
As a result, measures over and above regulatory requirements and industry standards are embedded into ANZ policies and procedures. For example ANZ will:
- not offer a credit card limit increase if customers have a recent poor credit performance or are having difficulty meeting repayments
- not offer customers credit limit increases if ANZ knows they are on a fixed income such as a government benefit
- provide customers with information about easy and efficient ways to reduce their credit card limit
- improve information and disclosure on credit card limit increase offers including how much the minimum monthly repayment would increase, and how to request a lower offer.
We have also trained a 'hardship team' in our call centres who can assist customers facing financial difficulty by offering debt moratoriums of up to three months and referring them to independent financial counsellors for money management coaching and assistance.
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