New NAB boss eyes business growth in Australia and New Zealand

Days into his new role, NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine has detailed growth opportunities for the big four bank.

New NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine. Picture: Valeriu Campan

National Australia Bank chief executive Andrew Irvine believes the economy is performing much better than expected, as he points to opportunities for the big four bank and its subsidiary BNZ to work together to capture more trans-Tasman business.

“One of the things we need to remember is Australia and New Zealand are probably two of the best countries in the world in which to live and work. Sometimes we forget that,” Mr Irvine told a Trans-Tasman Business Circle event in Auckland.

“Australia and New Zealand have a very shared history, we have very similar geopolitical and regulatory environments, a lot of our citizens spend time in each other’s countries. I think there’s much more we can do together.

“One of the things I’d love to see between NAB and BNZ is more facilitation of businesses who are seeking to grow and expand in both jurisdictions.”

Mr Irvine was speaking a week after stepping into the top job at NAB. He was previously head of business banking at the lender and before that headed up Canadian business banking at BMO Financial.

He noted the challenges facing the Australian and New Zealand economies and the steps being taken by many to weather higher inflation and interest rates.

“Right now obviously due to the need to fight inflation in both markets, interest rates are quite a bit higher than they have been in the recent past, and that’s dampened economic growth,” Mr Irvine said.

“What we’re seeing in both markets is that people are generally getting by. They’re having to juggle, they’re having to make choices, they’re having to budget, but in both markets, I think they’re doing that successfully.

“More broadly, both economies in Australia and New Zealand are doing much better than expected, and in Australia we’re anticipating continued economic growth of around 1 per cent.”

Cyber security is a key priority, with Mr Irvine telling the business conference that nothing took up more of his time than scams and fraud.

“It’s a plague of our times, frankly, where bad people are trying to take your hard-earned money,” he said.

“People are starting to become a bit more scam aware and we’ve certainly added significant capabilities, a little bit more friction in some of the payment processes so that we’re making it harder for the bad guys.”

He sees artificial intelligence, meanwhile, as providing both opportunities and threats.

“I think for the foreseeable future, we’re going to make people’s jobs easier, take away the mundane and allow people to focus on where human beings can add more value,” he said.

“People often worry about new innovation and technology and that it is going to fundamentally disrupt the relationship between labour and capital and therefore need less workers. But it’s also true that every big innovation or technological leap, in the history of mankind, has created more jobs than it’s taken away.

“Banks 50-60 years ago would have had thousands of people in their typist floors. We don’t have typists anymore and yet we employ more people than we did then.”