ANZ talks to its top customers as new oil and gas policy looms

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott says the bank is ‘walking the talk’ on climate change, unlike its domestic peers.

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott: ‘I think we hold ourselves to a pretty high bar.’ Picture: Arsineh Houspian

ANZ has completed a full round of engagement with its top 100 ­carbon-emitting customers ahead of a new climate policy later this year which will address its $7bn exposure to the oil and gas industry.

Chief executive Shayne Elliott rejected suggestions at an environmental, social and governance briefing on Thursday that ANZ had taken a softer approach than its local rivals to issues such as the bank’s exposure to thermal coal.

“I reject that; I’m not sure that’s actually true,” Mr Elliott said. “I think the difference is that we do what we say we’re going to do, and we’ve shown a willingness to be bold in making decisions.”

ANZ, he said, benchmarked itself globally, not just against the domestic major banks, and came out with a strong performance compared to its peers.

While not the global leader, it was part of the “more forward-leaning pack”, recognising it was important to “walk the talk” and make bold decisions, he said.

“Having said that, I think the whole area of climate policy needs to be written in pencil because it’s continually changing and evolving,” the ANZ chief said.

“So we’ll be issuing an update soon to reflect our current thinking and commitments.

“I think we hold ourselves to a pretty high bar.”

ANZ has previously said it was in the process of engaging with its top 100 emitters about their plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 so global warming is kept below 2C.

The bank said it was prepared to reject customers based on a risk assessment if they failed to come up with a convincing plan or were not taking the exercise seriously.

ANZ plans to exit thermal coal by 2030, and is developing a strategy in relation to its oil and gas exposure.

Of the 100 biggest emitters, about 40 are based in Australia, with the rest either in New Zealand or part of the bank’s Asian network.

Mr Elliott said the good news was that the companies involved had demonstrated good progress on their commitments, targets and measures implemented so far.

“We’re pleased with the progress,” he said. More broadly, he said the bank was “very, very worried” about the trend towards greenwashing, where organisations employed marketing spin to try to persuade people that their services and products are environmentally friendly.

The ethics and responsible management committee, chaired by Mr Elliott, set the bank’s standards, culture and philosophy on the issue.

“We’ve held ourselves to a really high standard on this,” the ANZ boss said.

“We’ve made a number of big decisions about participation in certain transactions where we felt they didn’t meet our standards and we decided to walk away.

“We’re very, very worried about this (greenwashing) trend because ultimately it undermines the entire sustainability opportunity for everybody – it’s in our selfish best interests and in the interests of the broader community.”

ANZ said it had funded or facilitated $14bn in sustainable finance since October 2019, ahead of its $50bn target by 2025.