Upbeat Brian Hartzer times Westpac gabfest well

The timing couldn’t have been better for Westpac boss Brian Hartzer to launch the People Leader Forum yesterday.

Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer is upbeat about the Australian economy.

The timing couldn’t have been better for Westpac boss Brian Hartzer to launch this year’s People Leader Forum in Brisbane yesterday, with key competitors in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Like all bank bosses, Hartzer would have chosen his words carefully, knowing full well a new day could see Westpac drawn into the circus.

The Brisbane forum was the first of a national tour aimed at getting senior leaders together to talk through the issues facing the bank. Like all the big four, ASIC has been checking over Westpac’s trading activities as part of the investigation into ANZ’s alleged rigging of the bank bill swap rate.

The folk at BT Life Insurance would have spent the weekend checking their files, hoping not to see evidence of the claim-denials that have landed CBA on the front page of this paper and others.

In an interview with The Australian recently, Hartzer was asked about his surprisingly upbeat view on the Australian economy.

Globally, he said, “the view from Davos was the world economy was OK but there were some downside risks, like the potential UK withdrawal from the European Union and US politics, among other geopolitical concerns”.

He described the Australian economy as “OK-ish but vulnerable to sentiment falls”.

“We are pleasantly surprised by the strength in the Victorian economy and NSW is travelling along well, but the downside risks are concentrated in WA, South Australia and Queensland.”

Hartzer noted political uncertainties continued to hold back business.

Small business is doing well but bigger businesses are being held back by the uncertainties they face.

Those customers who passed by the bottom floor of the Bank of Melbourne offices in 530 Collins Street in Melbourne last week would have seen a rare sight, with the head of the bank talking a customer through the process of depositing cash in an ATM and then transferring it to someone’s account.

For Hartzer it was second nature, given he earned pocket money as a grade seven kid in Connecticut in the US teaching people computer programming.

He talked his late father into buying him the latest Apple computer and that got him started — along with his can-do father, who taught him that “impossible just means it takes longer”.

Technology is his second language, which explains why IT boss David Curran was put in charge of operations and technology, reporting directly to Hartzer.

The bank of the future, he says, “will be much more a service business. Digitisation will give customers more confidence and free-up staff time to sell and to serve”.

Hartzer is excited about the new BT platform, which will eliminate a series of processes and give people the ability to operate right through their wealth management systems.

Hartzer says too many staff complain about having to spend their time doing “stuff”, which is robbing them of time to serve customers.

That’s what technology is aimed at eliminating at Westpac.

Hartzer is proud that 46 per cent of the bank’s leadership team are female.

The bank has also started targeting experienced women who may work in other fields but are interested in a change of career into banking.

Asked about concerns on the global credit markets, Hartzer says: “Right now Westpac has strong liquidity and good access, but the price of that access is increasing.

“We are starting to look at securitisation of assets, covered bonds and other debt capital market products becoming more alive to global funding issues.

“Sovereign wealth funds and others have been selling good credits and higher-grade paper because they can’t sell other grades.”

He acknowledges the bank faces high capital standards but says that at this stage it’s a question of how and in what form.

Westpac deliberately went to the high side of present rules. Its capital ratio stands at 10.5 per cent in Australia under APRA standards and 13.5 per cent on fully harmonised basis, which puts it at the top of the ranks of global banks.