Already a subscriber?ANZ has become the latest major lender to flag its intention to compete aggressively for commercial customers as the country’s largest banks brace for the business banking margins to be crunched as they have in mortgages.
Clare Morgan said, “in a competitive context”, there was scope for all the major banks to execute on their business banking strategies without a major hit to profitability.Citi analyst Brendan Sproules warned small business banking, in particular, was beginning to look crowded, telling his clients that “when everyone has the same idea at once, it tends to compress returns”.
ANZ has embedded its private bank into the commercial segment to better service high net worth customers with a business. Ms Morgan said the digital offering would not completely replace face-to-face banking in the commercial bank, yet the bank needed to “evolve” as customers increasingly used channels like call centres and apps for banking.She said that, “in a competitive context”, there was scope for all the major banks to execute on their business banking strategies without hurting profitability to the same extent as in the mortgage market.
Competition would only heat up further when “the key protagonist in retail banking” – Macquarie – pushes into business lending. At a strategy day in February, Macquarie banking head Greg Ward said he would deploy the same technology system it had used to build its share of home loan markets to over 5 per cent into the small business space.