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Sibos 25: who is buying paint?

ANZ Institutional Insights

2025-08-06 00:00

The way financial services groups view their data — and what kind of insights businesses are looking for from their banks — is changing.

According to ANZ’s Hari Janakiraman, conversations between banks and their institutional customers about data are no longer with treasurers alone, but a broader range of stakeholders eager to better serve their customers.

Like many banks, ANZ uses secure, aggregated and de-identified data to help provide customers with predictive analytics, cash-flow forecasting, and other tools to help their business. And that toolkit is growing, Janikaraman — ANZ’s Head of Industry & Innovation — told On Air with ANZ Institutional.

“As transaction bankers, we usually interact with chief financial officers and the finance team, chief treasury officers and treasury team, and to an extent procurement teams,” he told the podcast.

But now, conversations are increasingly held with a broader range of clientele, according to Janakiraman — including those in digital roles, marketing positions, and more.

“And what they are asking us, as their banking partner, is: ‘How can you help us with insights which enable us to understand our customers better?’,” he said.

Janakiraman made the comments on a podcast with Sally Robinson, Head of Data and New Propositions at ANZ Institutional. You can listen to the podcast — the first part in a two-part conversation — below.

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Robinson said the shift had led ANZ to reassess its own thinking about data. Where the bank would previously have been focussed on providing data on the specific industry the customer operated in, there’s a growing shift toward a focus on “what they need”.

“What we're learning with the data is not to think about what we would have traditionally talked to a customer about, but to actually stand back a little bit and listen to what they want to do,” Robinson said.

“That's totally flipping how we're thinking about solutioning for customers because typically, we would have very structured solutions for different industries.”

Furniture

In a bid to illustrate the shift, Janakiraman shared an example of a conversation he had some 18 months ago with the chief executive officer of a customer with ties to the furniture space.

“I was talking to him about how they use data, what type of data [are] going to be useful for them,” he said. “And we talked about data insights, how we can provide predictive analytics based on what we see in our data.”

It was then the executive asked a question Janakiraman said had a “profound” impact on his thinking around data.

“He said, ‘You know, Hari, what is also going to be very useful for me is: who is buying paint?’” Janakiraman recalled. “I said, ‘Why?’.

“He said, ‘Because from what we know from our research, people who buy paint are more likely to be renovating. And if they are renovating, they are more like to buy furniture.’”

The opportunity “clicked instantly”, Janakiraman said. “Not just in terms using [ANZ’s] own data.

“But our customers are also interested in how we can help them to bring multiple data sets together to give them an even more useful picture of their customers.”

 

Sibos is back in 2025.

From September 29 to October 2, the Sibos Financial Services Conference will provide a platform for industry participants to discuss the ideas and trends that will shape the future of payments, banking and more.

This year, the world’s premier financial services conference will be hosted in Frankfurt, Germany, and ANZ is once again excited to participate.

In the lead up to the event, ANZ Institutional will bring you insights from ANZ’s market-leading experts that offer a sneak peek into the future of the industry.

 

Robinson said ANZ was also focussed on providing data “around volumes of imports and supply chains and provenance of goods”.

“We have that content ‘in the building’,” she said. “And some of us are trying to work out, well, could we also make that data available to customers?”

Janakiraman said co-mingling of these sets could provide business with insights into the depth of specific supply chains, vulnerabilities, and meeting governance requirements.

“One unique thing which a bank like [ANZ] has is we bank customers in different industries, which may overlap at times,” he said. “We can use those types of interactions to build a bigger picture in terms of a particular customer's supply-chain network.”

The experts also addressed growth in data demand at a corporate level, and evolving attitudes toward data. Listen to the podcast above to find out more.

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Sibos 25: who is buying paint?
Staff writer
ANZ Institutional Insights
2025-08-06
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