Former ING Australia chief operating officer, Alexis George, will return to Australia at the end of the year to run ANZ Wealth’s insurance business, while general manager of advice and distribution, Paul Barrett, will leave the bank on September 16 in yet another round of changes under ANZ Global Wealth chief, Joyce Phillips.
George has a solid knowledge and understanding of ANZ Wealth, despite having never worked there. She was an executive director at its forerunner, ING Australia, from 2003 to 2007, when she left Australia to run ING Insurance in the Czech and Slovak Republics.
Eighteen months later, ANZ paid $1.86 billion to buy out ING’s 51-per-cent stake in the duo’s Australian joint venture, ING Australia.
In other ANZ changes, Neil Younger, who followed Barrett from the Commonwealth Bank to ANZ in 2011, has been appointed general manager of advice and open-market channels.
Last month, Kerri Thompson was appointed to the newly created position of managing director of bancassurance and customer experience, reporting to Phillips.
According to Stewart Oldfield, analyst at Wilson HTM, ANZ lags its banking rivals in wealth, with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and its Colonial First State business emerging as the winner so far.
“ANZ was late to the wealth management theme and has been trying to play catch-up ever since,” he said, adding that the bank’s former chief executive, John McFarlane, did not believe the margins in wealth management were sustainable.
“McFarlane has been proven right to date, but in the longer term all the banks have to be there,” Oldfield said.
“The banks have been unable to match the return on investment from wealth that they’ve been able to achieve in other parts of their banking empires. They paid top dollar to get into wealth, which has been a relative underperformer.”
Tyndall analyst, Craig Young, agreed that of the big four banks, CBA appeared to be the outright leader in wealth.
“It has always been a bit unclear what the ANZ was doing, while CBA knew it had a good funds management business and very good distribution, and it combined those two assets very well. It has a better strategy and has been better at executing that strategy,” he said.
It seems that the ANZ are not going to be as supportive of IFA’s going forward. I fear this could be a mistake.