BOQ CEO Patrick Allaway: Geopolitical risks growing for Australia

Patrick Allaway says the geopolitical environment is increasingly uncertain, with many risks for Australia.

BOQ CEO Patrick Allaway. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian.

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Economy

How would you rate the momentum of the Australian economy as we head into 2025? Official forecasts have Australia trimming interest rates from the first half of calendar 2025, is that consistent with your view? What are you seeing around inflation in your own business?

As we head into 2025, the momentum of the Australian economy appears to be on track with our earlier forecasts. At the start of 2024, we anticipated that the first half of the year would be the weakest point of this cycle, with momentum picking up in the second half and continuing into 2025. This forecast is driven by improvements in household disposable incomes. We expect lower inflation to lead to a trimming of the cash rate in the first half of 2025.

Outlook

What excites you heading into 2025? Are you likely to increase, hold steady, or trim your investment spend?

Despite a subdued Australian economy and ongoing challenges from inflation and global geopolitical uncertainty, the fundamentals remain strong. We are optimistic about the outlook, though the strength of improvement is uncertain. We anticipate rate cuts starting in the first half of next year to support economic recovery. We will continue to support our customers through this continued period of higher interest rates and cost-of-living pressures. We are more optimistic in our outlook for BOQ Group after managing through a difficult two years. We are now through peak investment spending and are beginning to see the benefits of our transformation.

Reform

As we move into an election year, in your mind, what’s the single biggest lever that can/should be used to lift Australia’s competitiveness or productivity? This could be across any area from labour market, tax reform, training or other areas to encourage investment.

Policy initiatives need to drive productivity and competition, delivering better outcomes for consumers. This includes reducing the escalating regulatory burden on businesses. We need to become more efficient in delivering key services across health, welfare, education, and affordable housing.

Geopolitics

Will a Donald Trump presidency have a potential impact on your business or sector (tariffs or streamlined regulation)? Does geopolitics drive a bigger part of your decision-making?

The geopolitical environment is increasingly uncertain, with many risks for Australia. Potential impacts of the change in the US presidency include a stronger US dollar (and a weaker Australian dollar), changes in trade flows affecting industries, and government regulations. Geopolitical uncertainty could create increased volatility across economic, inflation, and financial market outcomes. This necessitates a strong risk management capability, scenario-based solutions, and agility in our decision-making.

People

Has your organisation’s approach to flexible working – including working from home – evolved during the year. Is this likely to change further into 2025?

Our approach to flexible working has remained consistent and is not expected to change in 2025. Our biannual employee engagement surveys indicate that our people value the flexibility offered at BOQ Group. We take a role-based view on flexibility, as some roles (e.g., branch) need to be performed from a corporate location. As a national business with a distributed workforce, we expect employees in flexible roles to work on average 50 per cent of the time from a corporate location. This balance helps build engagement and belonging, ensuring our people feel connected while advancing business priorities.

Technology

Where is your organisation along the AI journey – is it in the developmental stage, or are you now using the technology at scale across your business? If so, are benefits matching the promise?

We are taking a deliberate approach to rolling out AI, focusing on safe and responsible use cases. Currently, we are enhancing internal productivity through AI, such as summarising call centre interactions, removing manual work for agents, and automatically populating our customer master. Through our partnership with Microsoft, we continue to explore opportunities to leverage their AI investments in sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams, while maintaining guardrails to ensure safe implementation. As we look to leverage AI directly with our customers, our investment in creating a modern, cloud-based data platform will help us harness real-time data and insights, enabling us to deliver personalised experiences at scale.