Latitude Financial CEO Bob Belan: A new year ahead for AI

Bob Belan says his group will be piloting several very specific AI and Gen AI use cases in 2025.

Latitude Financial Services CEO Bob Belan.

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?

Cost-of-living pressures for Australian households are very real, although fortunately labour markets remain resilient. Latitude, like so many businesses, is not immune to the impacts of inflation and higher interest rates. However, we’ve worked hard to offset these pressures and believe the outlook for 2025 is positive. Household balance sheets are holding up better than many expected and the employment outlook remains strong. This bodes well for consumption and consumer lending demand, two important macro factors at play for our business. We expect the rate cycle to pivot next year and, based on the information available, an RBA cut inside the first half of 2025 seems probable.

Outlook

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

Ongoing investment in technology is vital to meeting the evolving expectations of customers, driving further operating efficiency and unlocking new growth vectors in any business, including our own. Latitude is now realising the benefits of significant investment programs made in recent years. Our growth in 2024 was made possible by the technology modernisation and simplification work that’s been underway for some time and that will continue. Our investment strategy next year will remain disciplined and surgical, focused on adding or enhancing capability to better meet the product and experience needs of our customers and partners and profitably grow market share in our core segments.

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.

While there’s plenty to be buoyant about, productivity has been stuck in the slow growth lane for too long. If there was a simple lever, someone would have pulled it already, but the past decade has shown us that the productivity challenge is complex and multifaceted. Government and business alike need to be prepared to try new things. We spend a lot of time talking about innovation but how much true innovation is happening is subject to genuine debate. How can we take more calculated risk as a country? Are our taxation settings as efficient as they could be? Are our policy settings promoting competition within sectors of the economy and choice for consumers? Which countries beyond the usual benchmarks have cracked the productivity code and what can we learn from them?

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?

We always keep an eye on what’s happening in global markets given Latitude works with international financiers and partners across various parts of our business. Governments, people and markets take notice of what the US President says and does, irrespective of who’s in the chair. There’s no doubt that a strong US economy and stable political system has flow on benefits but Latitude’s core business of consumer lending and payments in Australia and New Zealand isn’t directly trade exposed to the US in the same way as mining or manufacturing.

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?

After plenty of experimentation and learning last year, 2024 has been an important reminder of the power of connection and the benefits of returning to the office, while at the same time offering flexibility through hybrid work. Our people have told us that flexibility is important to them and our approach of two to three days in the office and two to three days from home is working well.

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?

I spoke before about the productivity challenge and that’s one of the exciting opportunities about AI; how can we leverage this emerging technology at scale to do things better, faster, smarter – unlocking capacity for our workforce to focus on high value-add activities? Latitude’s AI efforts to date have mostly been in customer service, not just in the way we engage with customers but in the insights we can gleam from those interactions, many of which wouldn’t have been possible in the past. We’ll also be piloting several very specific AI and Gen AI use cases in 2025. While it’s still early days, we are optimistic that these experiments will translate into solutions that are deeply embedded in the way we operate our business in the coming years.