Financial Schools Reviews

Gail Kelly, Westpac’s chief executive says the lenders strategy of reorganisation during the financial crisis has borne fruit and that when the  lender announces its results on Wednesday would not be simply a story of ballooning bad debt.

The reorganisation “has a lot of momentum; you will see it in the results”, Mrs. Kelly said in an interview with The Australian

Westpac launched an initiative over the weekend called the bank manager project, part of the lenders strategy of focusing on customers.

The aim of the initiative is to reprise the bank manager’s role as an accessible executive with enough seniority to make decisions on behalf of the bank.

The project is as a result of surveys which show that as many as 70 per cent of people were unhappy with impersonal services from banks.

Westpac has invested tens of millions of dollars refurbishing as many as 250 of its branches, as well as the recruiting and training of managers for 60 per cent of the lenders 700 branches.

Westpac head of retail and business banking Peter Hanlon said that the lender had added 900 people to its branch network over the last 12 months.

Westpac has set the ambitious goal of having 14,000 of its staff members, including the chief executive and senior management team, having some kind of communication with the bank’s 4.5 million retail and business customers. The communication will be either face to face, over the phone or written, and will occur over the next few months.

It is a major undertaking by Westpac, and part of Mrs. Kelly’s desire to shed the bank’s product-driven approach, and “put the customer at the centre of everything we do”.

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