ANZ sees progress on AU$1.5 billion tech investment

ANZ Bank's AU$1.5 billion, five-year customer-facing tech transformation program, known as Banking on Australia, has already seen some early progress since the bank announced it back in early October 2012, with more than 1 million users already on the goMoney banking app.

In the company's half-year results today, ANZ said goMoney has more than 1 million users, and more than 1 million logons to the app per day. The two iPhone and iPad apps launched in October — FastPay and Transactive — have had 2,300 and 1,685 downloads, respectively, by business customers. Approximately 300 commercial bankers now have access to the company's iPad business app, with 1,200 more to come online this year.

ANZ has rolled out the 43 Cisco video conferencing systems into branches, and 800 NCR "iATMs" that allow customers to do transactions that have traditionally required the assistance of a teller will begin being rolled out from June, with 200 to be in place by the end of 2013.

The ultimate goal of the transformation will be to reduce the size of its branches.

"We are transforming our distribution network to reduce branch footprint costs, build out our contact centre capability, and improve frontline banker productivity," the bank said.

So far, 46 branches have been overhauled, with a total 9,000 square metre reduction in size. In total, 78 branches will be overhauled by September 2013.

ANZ today reported a half-year profit of AU$2.9 billion as of March 2013, up 7 percent compared to the half ending September 2012.