Data at heart of Maile Carnegie’s digital strategy at ANZ

ANZ’s new chief data officer is set to play a key role in exploiting the bank’s “crown jewels”.

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott uses his Apple Watch to demonstrate the tap and go contactless payment technology after the bank announced a tie-up with Apple on April 27, 2016 in Sydney, Australia.

Prize ANZ Bank recruit Maile Carnegie’s digital strategy is starting to take shape, with the return of products and marketing chief Matt Boss to the US triggering a split in his role and a much deeper focus on data analytics.

Kath Bray, who negotiated ANZ’s successful Apple Pay deal and previously reported to Boss, has been promoted to managing director of products, reporting to CEO Australia Fred Ohlsson.

The more telling appointment given chief executive Shayne Elliott’s determination to leave a digital legacy is the recruitment of Emma Gray as chief data officer.

The new role was created after a December meeting of the ANZ executive committee considered how best to use and manage the unquantifiable amount of data that the bank collects about its customers.

Compared to the tech giants like Google and Apple, the banking industry’s data skills are rooted in the last millennium.

Internally, Carnegie likes to refer to data as the bank’s “crown jewels”.

Gray, who was previously chief loyalty and data officer and group strategy director reporting to former Woolworths CEO Grant O’Brien, will have responsibility for ANZ’s data strategy, including how data is defined, gathered, managed and protected.

Carnegie said in a memo to staff that Gray would work closely with her and others to lead the digital division’s strategy.

She would also a build a business intelligence capability for the bank.

​In the next few months, Gray will pull together a data strategy to enable a “single view” of the ANZ customer.

Richard Gluyas’ next Four Pillars column is in tomorrow’s paper