Louise Saunders: Do you know what your bank or financial institution is doing to assist you, if you need it, during this economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic? You may have lost your job, your hours may be restricted and you might be finding it hard to manage those commitments, either at a personal level or business. And of course, any information we talk with and provide you with is of a general nature. If you do require information specific to your circumstances, then you should consult your own financial professional. With me is Shayne Elliott, who is the CEO of ANZ Bank. Shayne Elliott, good morning to you.
Shayne Elliott: Good morning, Louise.
Louise Saunders: Are you able to assist and to deal with customers who have issues at an individual level rather than applying a broad solution across your customers?
Shayne Elliott: Yes, I mean, we can do both. What we’re trying to do, and this is true for the entire industry because we know that this issue is affecting a lot of people all at the same time, we’ve tried to come up with sort of uniform packages, if you will. So this idea that you can get your bank to defer your loan payments for six months, that’s a package deal. And the benefit of those is they’re quick, they’re easy to implement and we can do it en masse. But of course, lots of individuals and people will have very unique circumstances and in those [situations] that’s why it’s best just to speak to your bank, explain your circumstances, and the banks can continue to do sort of bespoke packages, figure out what’s right for you.
Louise Saunders: Does the bank need to know that you need assistance? So I guess what I’m saying is you need to contact your bank, it’s not going to contact you?
Shayne Elliott: Pretty much. And it’s pretty easy, by the way Louise. I know at ANZ and I’m sure the other banks, you can literally go onto anz.com and you literally just apply there. If you’ve got a home loan and you want a deferral because you’re struggling because of the virus or whatever, frankly, just because you’re struggling, you can apply for that deferral by clicking a few buttons and we will get back to you. So it’s a pretty easy thing to do. We can’t really get to every single person and ask given we’ve all got millions and millions of customers. Now, that’s true for homeowners. For small businesses, at ANZ anyway, we are making an attempt to speak to every single small business that is a borrowing customer of ours to make sure that they’re okay and just checking in on them to see what help they need.
Louise Saunders: With me is Shayne Elliott from ANZ Bank, he is the CEO. If you have a question, please send a text
