ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott says he is focused on migrating Suncorp’s banking customers onto his own systems, promising the integration of the two businesses will be different to Westpac’s bungled efforts to bring in St George – which has run for more than a decade.
“We are not integrating anything,” he said. “Integration is when you take the best of different systems, and wire them together. But we are taking 1.2 million customers, and moving them across onto ANZ technology.” Dealing with all the regulations and necessary investment to support the bank “would have compromised our ability to invest capital in insurance, which is becoming more capital consumptive”, he said.
Wilson Asset Management’s senior equity analyst Anna Milne said the approval was good news for Suncorp’s insurance business.“It’s been in a state of flux for two years, and it makes sense for them to be a general purpose insurer,” she said. “The insurance industry is in a sweet spot at the moment, thanks to rational pricing , premium growth exceeding claims inflation, and really benign weather.”
“But now there are risks in integrating the deal. Moving customers over to one system is a risk, and ANZ has had difficulties in the retail banking space in terms of processing and anything that creates another stumbling block is a risk to its customer-facing business,” he added.