It was, most senior bankers had long opined, only a matter of time before bon vivant banker George Frazis would part ways with his employer, the staid Bank of Queensland.on Monday from the Brisbane-based lender after just over three years at the helm.After all, Frazis had few of the traits you’d associate with a typical regional bank boss. These tend to be conservative characters, who keep close tabs on their spending and shy away from any publicity.
Such dynamism caught the eye of Westpac boss Gail Kelly, who in 2009 hired Frazis to take charge of running the bank’s New Zealand business.Three years later, Frazis was promoted to head St George Bank, which Westpac had acquired in the financial crisis. Then in 2015, he was given the plum job of running Westpac’s massive consumer bank.
The Sydney-based bank spent the next few years diligently rebalancing its mortgage book so that by September 2020, principal and interest loans accounted for 76 per cent of its $441 billion Australian home loan portfolio, and interest-only loans had shrunk to 21 per cent . Growth in the BoQ’s important retail banking arm was stuttering, its technology was outmoded, and it lacked a coherent strategic direction.Frazis recognised that BoQ couldn’t rely on organic growth. It needed to make an important strategic acquisition to give it sufficient scale and to give it a presence in the important NSW and Victorian markets.
The bank’s net interest margin dropped from 1.86 per cent in the 2021 financial year to 1.74 per cent in 2022, although the bank noted that the margin had rebounded to 1.81 per cent in the final quarter., has again raised questions about Frazis’ leadership style, and whether he puts excessive pressure on his executives to deliver the results he wants.
But, he added, “the board has formed a view that different leadership is now required to ensure BoQ can continue to build a stronger and more resilient bank through future cycles”.
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