Delivering access to ANZ’s team of financial planners and wealth management products underpins a new digital application (app) the institution has just launched.
Called Grow, it offers a combination of investments, pensions, insurance and retail banking services.
ANZ Wealth claims the tool, which is currently only available on Apple devices but will soon also work on the Android digital platform, is the first comprehensive financial services app to be launched in Australia.
According to Joyce Phillips, ANZ’s chief executive officer of global wealth and private banking, the app will tie in with the group’s increasing focus on delivering scaled advice.
In the next 12 months, Phillips expects the app will also have a function enabling users to access ANZ’s “virtual advice” team.
“They will be able to connect via Skype or telephone, make appointments [with an ANZ financial adviser] and so on,” she says.
Asked whether ANZ Wealth’s financial advisers are at all threatened by the impending growth in the wealth division’s digital engagement with customers, Phillips says “they’re very excited about how it can bring them more business”.
With ANZ Wealth now managing upwards of $60 billion for its clients, the app will leverage off the group’s pool of 1.4 million customers who currently use its goMoney app.
Phillips also emphasises the access the app provides to ANZ’s retail superannuation offering. Through a partnership with the Australian Tax Office, this also enables paperless superannuation rollovers.
In addition, it includes access to share trading, backed by research from Morningstar, along with insurance tools and solutions – on top of access to traditional online banking services.
Commenting further on ANZ’s life insurance business, Phillips also touts what she calls its “industry leading low rate of lapse and claim rates”.
By utilising the bank’s extensive array of customer data, she says they have been able to pre-empt customers who are at risk of lapsing their insurance policies. Phillips refers to figures from Plan for Life, which show a decline of around 15 basis points in ANZ retail life insurance lapse rates.
