2021 Annual General Meeting – Chairman’s Address

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522
ANZ Centre Melbourne, Level 9A, 833 Collins Street, Docklands VIC 3008

16 December 2021

Market Announcements Office
ASX Limited
Level 4
20 Bridge Street
SYDNEY NSW 2000





2021 Annual General Meeting – Chairman’s Address

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) today released its 2021 Annual
General Meeting – Chairman’s Address.
It has been approved for distribution by ANZ’s Continuous Disclosure Committee.




Simon Pordage
Company Secretary
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited

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CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS
2021 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
16 December 2021
Melbourne

Good morning and welcome to the 2021 Annual General
Meeting of ANZ shareholders which, as there is a quorum
present, I declare open.

My name is Paul O’Sullivan and I’m joined here at our
Melbourne head office by our Chief Executive Officer Shayne
Elliott.

All our other directors are available in person or participating
remotely.

Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people
as the Traditional Custodians of the land from which we are
presenting and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present
and emerging. I extend that respect to other Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.

We had hoped to be hosting this year’s meeting in Adelaide.
However, given the evolving nature of the virus and ever-
changing travel restrictions, we felt it wiser to again revert to a
virtual event.

There is strong interest among shareholders in the traditional
format and we expect to be presenting from South Australia
again next year.

To help with the smooth running of today’s meeting, our Group
Executive, Talent & Culture and Service Centres, Kathryn Van
der Merwe, will be assisting us.

Kathryn will now take us through some detail on voting and on
asking questions.

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Over to you Kathryn.

[Kathryn Van der Merwe]

Thank you Kathryn.

I now declare the polls open on items 2 to 5, and I encourage
shareholders to begin submitting questions ahead of the formal
business of the meeting.

Let me begin with a review of financial year ‘21.

In a year that began with such optimism, it quickly became
obvious that COVID disruptions would again weigh heavily in
2021.

While there are reasons for optimism about the economy, there
remain many ongoing challenges.

Pleasingly, vaccination rates in Australia and New Zealand are
world-leading and domestic borders are reopening, most in
time for the Christmas holiday period.

Moreover, the overall economy in Australia and New Zealand
has remained in remarkably good shape with all indicators
pointing to a solid rebound.

However, there will of course be issues to manage.

Tourism and hospitality have had a tough two years. In
addition, inflation driven by supply chain bottlenecks and
strong housing markets in Australia and New Zealand are
creating policy challenges for Governments and regulators.

Unemployment has risen slightly. At the same time, the lack of
overseas migration has contributed to staffing shortages in
crucial sectors.

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As the economy opens up again we’re proud of the way ANZ
has supported those in need through the pandemic.

In the early days we rightly prioritised supporting those who
had been most impacted by various lockdowns, notably with
loan deferrals.

These deferrals, which rolled off during the year, provided tens
of thousands of customers with the critical time required to
manage their cashflow through lockdowns.

Likewise, we took action to ensure our people across our entire
international network were well supported and the Board is
pleased with the continued positive results from our employee
engagement surveys.

Performance & Dividend

Let me talk a little bit about the business performance in
financial year ‘21.

From a bank perspective, the year demonstrated the benefits
of a diversified portfolio as we successfully navigated the
continuing impacts of COVID-19 while also providing solid
returns for our shareholders.

For the 2021 financial year we posted a Statutory Profit of
$6.16 billion which was up 72% on the prior year.

While this was a pleasing outcome, the main driver was the
partial reversal of COVID-19 related credit provisions.

Looking through the impact of provisions, profit was flat year-
on-year but this actually reflects solid management of the Bank
through the crisis.

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As a result, we were pleased to pay a Total Dividend of 142
cents. This was up from 60 cents last year and meant more
than $4 billion was returned to you, our shareholders.

This was a particularly pleasing outcome given the heavy
burden on investors through the pandemic as the banking
sector stepped up to support customers and the community.

Now last year I stressed that your Board would be focused on
four key areas to improve shareholder returns. In particular:
the efficient use of capital, improving customer outcomes,
reducing the cost to run the bank and the continual
improvement of our culture.

I think it is important to report to you on our performance and
I am pleased to let you know we made solid gains in all of
these areas.

Capital management remained a highlight. We are one of the
most strongly capitalised banks in the world with an APRA
Common Equity Tier One capital ratio of 12.3% at the end of
our financial year.

To put this in a broader perspective, this is $6 billion above
APRA’s ‘unquestionably strong’ measure.

Very importantly, we achieved this result without the need to
dilute existing shareholders by issuing new shares in order to
raise additional capital.

In fact, our intense focus has led to sector leading Total
Shareholder Returns over the 12 months to 30 September.

We achieved all this while returning additional capital to
shareholders and paying a dividend more in line with our long-
term payout ratio.

Let me turn to costs.

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We know the industry will continue to face downward pressure
on margins and while we were early to this understanding -
and we’ve led the industry in this regard - we are maintaining
relentless pressure on our cost base.

I’m pleased with the focus of the management team. We were
the only major to reduce the cost of running the bank, allowing
us to invest in new initiatives at a greater rate than our
competitors.

Looking at customer outcomes, we need to better anticipate
and ultimately make faster - and smarter - credit decisions.

This year major increases in demand for home loans in
Australia impacted our ability to process applications in a
timely manner. Unfortunately, this resulted in a loss of market
share which was a disappointing outcome.

Naturally this has been a major focus for the Board and
Management and we are confident the systematic actions being
taken by management will address these issues, including
increased investment in automation and process improvement.

As a result, we expect our Australian home loan portfolio to
return to growth in this half and for ANZ’s growth to be in line
with system growth sometime in the second half of this
financial year.

It is important to note that margin across the Group was well
managed in a challenging environment.

The events of the past two years also highlighted the benefits
of a strong culture.

We maintained very high levels of staff engagement despite
the majority of our people working remotely - and we attracted
hundreds of engineers and data scientists, many from

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companies like Apple, Amazon and Square, to help completely
rebuild our digital capability.

And, above all, while there is still more to be achieved, we also
made the strongest improvement in gender diversity in several
years, with female representation in leadership roles increasing
by around 2 percentage points to 35.3%.

So, if I summarise our performance in financial year ‘21:

We strengthened our balance sheet

We returned to long term dividend payout levels while funding
a share buyback

We led the sector on cost management.

Our staff remained highly engaged despite COVID-induced
disruptions.

And we continued to invest in new digital banking platforms
which will radically improve customer and staff experience.

The environment remains uncertain and highly competitive,
with many challenges ahead.

We recognise we have more to do, particularly in the home
loan processing space, but we have made good progress in
building a bank to better compete in a highly competitive,
fragmented market. Shayne will shortly discuss the work we
are doing to address these challenges through our ANZx
program.

Resolutions

I also want to give you the Board’s perspective on some of the
resolutions being put to the meeting today.

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Let me begin with the adoption of the remuneration report.

Ilana Atlas, the Chair of the Human Resources Committee, will
talk specifically to our approach however given its importance
to many shareholders I feel it is appropriate I also make some
initial comments.

On the whole, management had a good year, either exceeding
or meeting most of the objectives set by the Board. Profit was
up, capital management was strong and New Zealand and
Institutional had particularly good years.

There were challenges and this is reflected in the final
outcomes for our Disclosed Executives with the average
variable remuneration being around 60% of their maximum
opportunity.

The Board believes this struck the right balance considering all
that was achieved this year, including our strong margin
performance.

The other resolution I want to specifically address relates to
climate change and our lending to the natural resources sector.

We recognise the most important role we play in enabling the
transition to net zero by 2050 is to work with our customers to
reduce their emissions.

This is not new for ANZ.

We have led the Australian banking sector for several years
with a focus on engaging with 100 of our largest emitting
business customers, a $50 billion sustainable financing target
and industry leading climate related disclosures.

We know our stakeholders want further clarity on how we’re
aligning our lending portfolios with the Paris goals.

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This year ANZ became the first major Australian bank to join
the global net zero banking alliance.

In line with this commitment, we recently announced new
emission intensity reduction targets and pathways for two key
sectors: power generation and large-scale commercial buildings
portfolios – another first for an Australian Bank.

For our power generation portfolio, our target is to achieve a
50% portfolio emissions intensity reduction by 2030.

And for our portfolio of large-scale commercial buildings in
Australia, we have set a target to reduce portfolio emissions
intensity by 60% within the same time frame.

We will progressively expand these pathways to other key
carbon intensive sectors, including oil and gas, in 2022.

While we are embracing our role, I accept there will be some
listening today who feel we are not doing enough to act on
climate change. Paradoxically there will be others who think we
are moving too fast.

Specifically, there are some who would prefer ANZ no longer
lend to fossil fuel companies at all.

ANZ’s policy is clear: we will only lend to energy companies
that have a target driven, publicly disclosed plan to reduce
their emissions in line with the Paris goals.

We believe this will encourage and support companies that are
genuinely committed to a lower emission future.

Whereas a simple ban on lending to the fossil fuel industry
would likely force those companies to source finance from
banks less committed to emissions reduction.

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My message today is we’re prepared to work with those who
are committed to driving the change to a lower carbon
emissions future.

That is a far better result for the community than simply
washing our hands, walking away and pushing these
companies into the hands of less responsible lenders.

We believe this will encourage and support companies
genuinely committed to a lower emission future.

Ultimately the role of the Board is to ensure we are taking a
prudent, measured approach and we feel we have considered
the needs of our customers, investors and the community in
our transition plans for a lower carbon future.

Concluding remarks

Now at the conclusion of this meeting we will be saying
goodbye to one of our long-standing directors in Paula Dwyer,
who is stepping down after nine-years of dedicated service.

Paula is one of Australia’s most respected non-executive
directors and we have been incredibly fortunate to have her
serve on our Board, particularly in her role as Chair of the Audit
Committee. Paula, we thank you for your service to the Bank
and wish you well for the future.

We are of course very pleased to be able to welcome Christine
O’Reilly, who will be standing for election later in the meeting.

Christine is an outstanding company director and her extensive
experience makes her the ideal Director to take over as Chair
of our Audit Committee.

Christine will address the meeting directly but I know, if
elected, she will make a significant contribution on behalf of all
shareholders.

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Finally, it’s reassuring to know we have a dedicated workforce
of more than 39,000 people working hard every day for all our
stakeholders.

On behalf of all shareholders I express our thanks to them.

I’d also like to acknowledge our customers for again trusting us
with their business and you our shareholders for supporting us
through the year.

Your support is much appreciated by the Board.

And with that, I will now ask our Chief Executive Officer
Shayne Elliott to address the meeting, Shayne.