How Anne Loveridge’s chance meeting led to NAB boardroom

Anne Loveridge first met out-going NAB chair Michael Chaney in her early 30s working for investment bank Gresham Partners.

Anne Loveridge

Anne Loveridge first met out-going National Australia Bank chair Michael Chaney as an ambitious junior audit partner in her early 30s working on the accounts of boutique investment bank Gresham Partners.

At the time Chaney was the boss of burgeoning Perth-based conglomerate Wesfarmers, which still owns half of Gresham. Little did Loveridge know the chance meeting would ultimately set up the next phase of her career almost 20 years later.

Chaney, contemplating his own retirement from the NAB board after 10 years, had been scouting around his network for fresh director blood and ­Loveridge’s name popped up on his radar.

“When my name came up he had a reference point that, yes, he had met me before,” says Loveridge, who will retire as deputy chair of PwC Australia in November before taking up her directorship at NAB the following month.

Her appointment will be one of Chaney’s final footprints on the bank’s board, along with the elevation of NAB director and former Treasury secretary Ken Henry to the chair.

Loveridge, 54, had been considering life after the PwC partnership for some time. The connections formed over her two decades as an audit and advisory partner in the financial services sector have seen Loveridge in and out of boardrooms and liaising with directors as a matter of course.

But there was a stronger connection into the NAB boardroom from Loveridge’s PwC alumni in the form of former audit partner John Thorn, who had retired as a director of the $85 billion bank at the end of last year.

Loveridge, who came to Australia 30 years ago from Britain as a young accountant on a two-year secondment and never left, recounts how Thorn had been her sponsor into the PwC partnership 18 years ago.

The two now know each other well and soon enough Loveridge was being asked to put forward an “expression of interest” in joining the board.

“A number of people had begun asking me about whether I would be interested in non-executive director roles — ­particularly because I was female and boards are looking for senior executive females with relevant experience,” she says.

From soft soundings that began in January, Loveridge began a series of formal meetings with NAB directors she had not met before, including incoming chair Henry, and less formal catch-ups with those she already knew.

“They were all face to face, some were like an interview and some were less formal,” she recalls of the three-month period towards her appointment.

Retired PwC partner David Armstrong and Kiwi partner John Waller will be two friendly faces around the board table when she begins the new role in December.

Depending on committee memberships, as a NAB director Loveridge, who describes herself as “curious and questioning”, can expect to be paid between $200,000 and $300,000 a year.

“I listen, I ask questions, I am open-minded, but equally self-confident in my own point of views,” she says.

“I am quite good at joining the dots that other people don’t see.”

Loveridge, who is the PwC partner with broad responsibility for the NAB relationship overall, likens professional services to a boardroom in that both allow for “influence, but not necessarily control”.

She has crossed paths with NAB boss Andrew Thorburn several times since his appointment to the top job last August.

“I think he’s been more focused on customers since taking over the role, not professional service providers,” she says.

Loveridge will take the female complement on the NAB board to three, alongside Jillian Segal and Geraldine McBride. This is part of a broader collective of 11 directors, which leaves the bank just shy of the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ gender diversity boardroom target of 30 per cent.

Loveridge is a self-described “champion of diversity”.

“You demonstrate you can be a successful leader not doing things in a way they have always been done … diversity isn’t just about gender, it’s about diversity in how we work and how we do things,” she says.

Loveridge knows about breaking ground. When her first child was three and her youngest just eight months, she was the first partner admitted to PwC who was working part-time.

“I don’t shy away on being measured on outcomes — if you are happy with those, don’t be focusing on the fact I am not in the office on Fridays, or what time I am leaving, or that I am arriving three days a week after taking my children to school,” she says.

“Diversity is a mindset.”

Her daughter, now 18, and her son, 20, are studying engineering at university.

Along with Thorn, she cites PwC managing partner Rob Ward and Perpetual director Ian Hammond as hugely influential in her professional development.

When Loveridge had her first child she was reporting to Hammond, who was then a partner at the firm, which at that stage had no formal maternity leave or part-time work policies.

“So together we just worked out what it was,” she says.

While servicing Westpac as an audit partner, Loveridge developed a strong professional relationship with one of Australian most respected business figures, Caroline Hewson.

“I still use her as a sounding board,” Loveridge says of Hewson, who today is a director at BHP Billiton and Stockland.

Loveridge hopes her NAB directorship will be the first of others as she embarks on the next phase of her career, where she wants to expand the debate about workplace productivity and diversity.

“Talking to women is only addressing half the challenge — you need both men and women to be able to work differently,” she says.

“We need to be having a broader conversation about participation and productivity, the model of working hasn’t changed dramatically and yet society has.”