Responsible practices

Our approach

Banking depends on trust. Our stakeholders, including governments, regulators, customers, communities and our employees, expect us to grow our business responsibly. This is particularly important as we move through uncertain times, and are faced with worsening economic conditions globally, and we enter and expand in countries where legal and regulatory frameworks are different to those in our traditional markets of Australia and New Zealand.

We have introduced clear governance structures; are improving management of social, environmental and reputation risks and opportunities; are supporting our customers facing hardship; and are contributing to the communities we serve.

Our long-term objective is to make responsible practices the foundation of our decision making. This will include training our people to more deeply understand social and environmental issues relevant to our clients so that together we can effectively manage the risks and maximise opportunities for market differentiation, while promoting a culture of respect for each other and our communities.

2012 targets

Each year we set a series of public targets to further embed our responsibilities into everyday business. For 2012, these are:

  • Improve customer satisfaction and achieve the No. 1 or 2 position amongst major banks for our retail, commercial and Institutional businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
  • Resolve 90% of retail customer complaints within 5 business days in Australia.
  • Increase our natural gas and renewables lending to achieve 15-20% growth in our project structured finance of lower carbon energy.
  • Publicly report progress on the implementation, application of and training in our sensitive sector lending policies and human rights statement.
  • Improve employee engagement, including perceptions of “values-based leadership”.
  • Reduce LTIFR in Australia and New Zealand by between 5-10% and continue implementation of our safety and well being programs globally.
  • Assist our Australian customers respond to and manage risks and opportunities as carbon is priced.
  • Implement our Responsible Sourcing Program with a focus on our top 10 highest impact categories and publicly report the progress of our supplier education and auditing strategy.
  • Develop and pilot a program to improve staff understanding of customers in financial difficulty to aid early identification of and assistance to affected customers.

About some of our flagship initiatives

Supporting customers in hardship

Dedicated teams in Australia and New Zealand are helping customers manage and emerge from periods of financial difficulty. Our Customer Connect program has been established to make it as easy as possible for customers facing financial difficulty to get the help they need, when they need it.
Respecting people and communities

We have drawn together a set of standards called ‘Respecting people and communities: ANZ’s approach to human rights’. These standards help us to develop a culture of respect in the way we treat our employees, work with our clients and suppliers, and contribute to the communities where we operate.
Supporting our communities

We support many community causes and organisations through our GIVE program, which stands for Giving, Investing, Volunteering and Emergency relief. The GIVE program highlights the ways we contribute to local communities by giving donations to charities, investing in partnerships with community organisations, volunteering our skills and time to support community causes and responding to emergencies through supporting disaster relief and recovery activities.

 

2011 highlights

  • Employee engagement increased from 64% to 70% this year.
  • $3.7m was provided to assist communities affected by natural disasters across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region.
  • 91,410 hours were volunteered by our employees and skilled volunteering pilots are now underway in Australia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.
  • We have assisted more than 14,000 people facing hardship in Australia and New Zealand.
  • We developed a new Supplier Code of Practice which outlines the social, environmental and governance standards we expect suppliers to meet as a condition of doing business with us.
  • We concluded our review of our four sensitive sector policies on Forestry, Energy, Water and Mining and Minerals.
  • We implemented mandatory online training for Credit Approval Discretion staff to take greater account of social and environmental risks. To date, more than 84% of staff have completed this course.
  • We continue to lead the major Australian banks on retail customer satisfaction.
  • ANZ moved to outright first lead bank status in both Australia and New Zealand in the Peter Lee Relationship Survey this year.

More information

 

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