Hello, everybody. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that I'm connecting from the lands of the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation. I also acknowledge the traditional owners of the various lands in which our attendees are joining from. Now, today, I'm joined by Maile Carnegie, our Group Executive, Australia Retail, and Mark Whelan, our Group Executive, Institutional. Now in this session, I'll cover our integrated approach to purpose, strategy and ESG, and how it ensures that we're driving value for the bank. An update on the bank we're building strategy, and how we're setting ourselves up for future growth, including through some structural changes. Then lastly, what we're seeing with the uncertain macroeconomic environment with interest rate rises and cost of living pressures.
Now, here I'll mainly talk to the situation with an Australian lens, given most of our customers are here, and it's where we're likely to see potential issues arising. I do want to acknowledge from the outset that the Australian market isn't alone in what's, in what it's experiencing. Of course, the same stresses are also being felt in New Zealand and across the Pacific. I'll then pass on to Maile to talk specifically about how our customers are managing and what we're doing in preparation to assist those who may need help. Mark will then cover our environmental sustainability strategy and how we're supporting customers successfully manage their own transition. Firstly, to our approach. At ANZ, we have a clear sense of purpose: to shape a world where people and communities thrive.
Now that purpose guides our decisions about who we bank, how we behave, and what we care about most. Now, we've worked hard over the last five years to ensure we've a strong culture, an embedded purpose, and that ethics and values are integrated into our everyday decision-making. Now, our strategy is also clear. We want to improve the financial well-being and the sustainability of our customers. Now we've three priorities that we're focused on, and they are helping people save for, buy and own a sustainable, livable and affordable home. Helping people start or buy and sustainably grow their business. Of course, helping customers move goods and capital around the region.
Now, aligned with these are the areas that we care about most or our ESG priority areas, and they are improving the financial well-being of our people, customers and communities by helping them make the most of their money. Secondly, improving the availability of suitable and affordable housing options for all Australians and New Zealanders. Supporting household, business and financial practices that improve environmental sustainability. Now, these are underpinned by our commitment to fair and responsible banking, as well as issues identified through our annual materiality assessment. Namely, investing in new technology and tools to protect our customers from scammers looking to steal their data and money. Ensuring that we have the most empathetic and helpful customer experience processes for for when things go wrong, including managing complaints and customers in financial difficulty. Investing in technology and partnerships that help customers improve their financial well-being and create value.
Finally, looking out for our people, physically and mentally, so they can bring their best selves to assist customers. Our purpose, strategy and ESG priority areas are aligned as well as being integrated with our material issues. Together they work to support our overall ambition to create value for our customers, for the community and for shareholders. Now, what's also unique about ANZ is how our approach to ESG considers our extensive international footprint. As you know, we operate in more than 30 markets and therefore manage a broad range of ESG issues across our global business and operations. That means we need to be aware of challenges across the entire network and regularly assess and identify numerous ESG risks and opportunities. Now, this ESG approach is critical to creating value and delivering long-term success.
Now, how we hold ourselves to account and govern our approach is also critical, and we have two ESG committees dedicated to this. Our Board Ethics and Environmental, Social and Governance Committee is responsible for setting the policies and the principles for our approach. It's focused on overseeing our response to risks and opportunities, as well as identifying and understanding our most material ESG issues, which informs our approach and guides our targets, external reporting and disclosures. Over the past 12 months, this board committee has spent the bulk of its time on governance issues, such as making sure our policies, like those which govern our lending to sensitive sectors, are up-to-date and contemporary. It's also spent a lot of time overseeing our climate change commitment, including setting our portfolio emissions pathways, like in commercial properties and power generation.
We have our Ethics and Responsible Business Committee, which I chair, and is a leadership and decision-making body. It operationalizes our ESG work, considering the social and environmental impacts of the industries we finance, so the who we bank side of things, as well as our treatment of customers and the communities we serve, the how we bank and how we behave side. This year, the executive committee spent its time discussing topics such as scams and cybercrime and customers in difficulty or in need of additional support. That included initiatives such as the additional training we provided to 4,500 of our people to help them identify and offer special support to customers facing financial difficulty.
Now, I just wanna talk briefly about the bank we're building, which sets out our ambition to shape a better ANZ, one that's more focused and more connected, and one built on contemporary platforms to help grow our market share sustainably and drive better lifetime customer value. Now, the last few years, we've rightly focused on our operations, on remediation, costs, and simplifying our business to provide returns for shareholders, and now we're concentrating on growth and investment. External forces are gonna challenge how we execute the strategy. We've got to hold more capital. Competition is increasing, and margins are reducing over the long term. It no longer makes sense to keep doing what we've been doing in the past, so we need to get a few things right. We must build an innovative, compelling, and data-driven customer proposition.
This means having competitive, fast, reliable, and simple products and services that meet our customers' needs. We need to establish partnerships that unlock value for us and our customers and have automated business services that are supported by cloud-based technology that is open, contemporary, resilient, and compliant. We need to ensure we've a more adaptive and agile organization that encourages innovation. Now, our people are also critical to the delivery of the strategy. We want purpose-led people who drive value by caring about our customers and the outcomes we create. The last couple of years of the pandemic really showed us what our people are capable of, supporting our customers during extreme times of stress. Now, we're proud of them and their work, and our recent employee engagement results are testament to this, with overall engagement at 84%.
Additionally, 89% of our staff have reported a feeling of belonging, which is above the global best-in-class benchmark. To measure our success with the bank we're building, we continue to build out clear metrics with internal and external targets. These include having customers who are more loyal and engaged and have greater financial wellbeing over their lifetime. It's also ensuring our financial results are stronger and more sustainable over the long term. We're building an ANZ that improves the financial wellbeing and sustainability of our customers and one that delivers consistently strong shareholder returns. No doubt we've got some work to do, but we're excited and driven to make this succeed. In addition to the strategic changes, another part of how we're managing the future of ANZ is with some structural change.
You would have recently seen our announcement about acquiring Suncorp Bank. A key benefit of this acquisition is the strategic alignment of bringing the two organizations together. We both have strong corporate cultures, engaged workforces, and shared values and purposes, and we're excited about what the future holds for us together. Now, we also recently proposed the establishment of a non-operating holding company for the group, which will give us strategic flexibility to partner with or acquire non-banking businesses as we prepare our core business for a digitally enabled future. Now, that proposal is subject to numerous approvals, and we're working through that process currently. We expect to send shareholders a memorandum on the NOHC structure in early November 2022. Now, lastly, before I hand over to Maile, I want to discuss the external environment and some of the economic challenges we're seeing.
Globally, there are geopolitical tensions with Ukraine and Russia and North Asia and the Pacific. Trade tensions with the U.S. and China continue. There are also very significant energy security issues in the European Union, which is having a knock-on effect around the globe. Here, closer to home, in key retail markets of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, many of our customers are dealing with real cost of living pressure. Rising inflation and higher food and fuel prices across the Pacific are starting to have a real impact on people's standard of living. In New Zealand, inflation is at its highest point since 1990, and in Australia, inflation is also at its highest point in more than 30 years and is outpacing wage growth. Interest rates are rising, with the RBA undertaking a substantial rate tightening cycle.
Now, because of this, we're asking ourselves what it means for the financial resilience of our customers and what we can do to support them if they're feeling challenged. While we do know households have built up a large pool of savings over the last couple of years, it's still too early to tell how the situation will play out. There are going to be some customers vulnerable to stress, and we will be on the lookout to assist them. Now, with that, let me hand over to Maile to talk about how we are preparing to assist our customers through potential future challenges. Thanks, Maile.
Thanks, Shayne, and I'm really pleased to be here on my first ESG briefing. Today, I want to focus on three things. Firstly, what we're seeing with our retail customers, considering the challenging macro-economic environment. Secondly, our strategy for early identification of those customers heading towards difficulty, because we believe early engagement will lead to better customer outcomes, particularly in the economic environment we're heading into. Thirdly, how we're building propositions to help strengthen the overall financial health and wellbeing of our customers for the long term. Now, our strategy in Australia Retail is to support our customers to achieve their financial wellbeing goals. For our home loan customers, this means making sure they are informed about their mortgage and that it's within their means. At ANZ, we have about 1 million Australian customers who have a home loan with us.
Many of these customers have built up a significant savings buffer through COVID, as Shayne has already mentioned. About 40% of our customers have 12 or more months of saving buffers across offset savings or redraw facilities. We also have about 70% of our customers who have paid additional funds to reduce their principal debt. Our default direct debit setting, which is not consistent across the industry, means we did not automatically reduce minimum payments amounts as interest rates decreased, and this has helped play a part in this. In effect, we put friction in our customers' ability to step down their payments because we wanted to encourage them to get ahead on their loans. So far, even as rates are rising, more than 50% of our principal and interest customers with direct debits are continuing to pay more than their minimum repayment amounts.
The percentage of customers who are behind in their loan repayments has also continued to decrease. About 0.7% of home loans are more than three months behind, which is lower than pre-COVID levels. Now, there are a range of factors that are behind this. A typical trigger for default is a life event, like illness or unemployment. So record low unemployment rates are certainly playing a part, as are some of our customers who reset their mortgages during COVID. It's also a reflection of the quality of home loans written in recent years, from changes to our lending policies, as well as the regulatory changes that followed the GFC.
Measures such as interest rate floors and higher interest rate buffers when assessing home loans, which are now at 300 basis points, and higher household expenditure measures have contributed to customers being better placed to service their loans through these challenging times. While customers are in a stronger starting position, the current environment is clearly a challenge for many people. The potential downturn will look different to what we've seen in recent history, where hardship was triggered largely by unemployment. We're in a rising rate environment, and for many of our home loan customers, this is the first time they are experiencing this. Potentially, even those customers who are employed with regular wages may experience some stress with meeting their repayments. Our job here is to identify those customers and work with them as early as possible to support them through this challenging period.
Data plays an important role in early identification of customers heading towards difficulty, and we believe this is particularly important in today's environment. We are using data analytics to look at savings, credit, and offset accounts to help understand customers' financial behavior and the potential of future outcomes. It analyzes events like interest rate changes, increases in cost of living and cash flow, where these could have an impact on our customers' financial position. This is helping us to understand who is in positive financial position to meet future repayments, but also who could experience financial stress in the next 12 months, including accounting for forecasted increase in rates. The data is actually showing very low levels of stress, and we're not seeing any more, kind of increase in our lagging measures as well, such as calls to hardship teams.
We are assuming that this may change, and we're focused on proactively identifying and contacting customers who may need help so that we can try and support them early. This could be through text messages, nudges, or prompts, for example, courtesy reminders of when next payments are due, or direct phone calls suggesting, for example, to set up a direct loan payment. When we do identify potential hardship, we do a full review of our customer's financial position to see what additional assistance may be suitable. Measures range from arrears capitalization, rate reduction, term extension, or conversion to interest-only for a period. Overall, we wanna support our customers through periods of financial hardship as it's in no one's interest to have them default. We invested significantly in building and upskilling our financial hardship team during the pandemic to support our customers through those tough times.
Our team is well-positioned to help those who might need assistance as we enter into a period of economic uncertainty. Now, before I hand to Mark, I wanted to quickly mention how we are building our propositions to help strengthen the overall financial wellbeing of our customers, including through ANZ Plus. The transformation of our retail platform has involved the simplification and rebuilding of hundreds of products, systems, processes, and yes, technology with a mission to improve the financial wellbeing of our customers. What's important here is that we did not start the process with what technology to use. Rather, we started by identifying the nine core principles that drive financial wellbeing.
We have built the products, systems, processes, and yes, the technology that would enable us to bring these to life with our customers. Our initial Transact and Save product within the ANZ Plus app is just the tip of the iceberg in the functionality to enable customers to have better visibility and control over their money and to help them achieve their goals. We only launched in July and are seeing strong growth, not just in customers joining, but also using key features such as spend predictions and saving goals. We will give more information about the ANZ Plus program at our year-end results, but we're working hard to expand the program as quickly as possible because we believe the financial well-being tools, insights, and support offered by ANZ Plus will stand our customers in really good stead, particularly in periods of economic uncertainty.
It's got a lot to live up to, but I'm excited by what's coming with ANZ Plus. With that, I'll hand over to Mark. Thank you.
Terrific. Thanks, Maile. I'll cover three areas before handing back to Shayne for Q&A. First, our environmental sustainability strategy. Second, how we're engaging with our customers on their transition. Finally, some insights from my recent climate-focused discussions with customers, regulators, and peers in the UK and Europe. We want to be the leading Australian and New Zealand-based bank in supporting our customers' transition to net zero emissions. Currently, we are in a net zero super cycle of activity. This presents an unprecedented opportunity around how energy is produced, distributed, and also consumed. Effectively, it's the climate value chain. We have a key role to play by directing our finance, services, and advice to support our customers in shifting to low carbon business models.
That's why we're committed to funding and facilitating AUD 50 billion by 2025 to help our customers achieve lower emissions and are well advanced in meeting this target. Our strategy embraces the opportunities presented by the transition. It leverages our strengths and focuses efforts on customers, sectors, and products that offer the best opportunities for positive impact in climate change and also for our shareholders. I'll now give some real examples of our strategy coming to life. First, a one point four billion dollar green loan for the Intellihub Group, a leading provider of metering infrastructure and data solutions. The funds are being used to roll out smart meters across Australia and New Zealand. Also, a new banking relationship with U.S.-based NextEra Energy, operator of the largest portfolio of wind and solar projects globally.
We've also financed the first ever EV battery manufacturing plant in Southeast Asia for HLI Green Power, a joint venture bringing together the Kia and Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution in Korea. These examples show the value of our regional network, which is the broadest and deepest of the Australian banks. We've also provided a AUD 200 million funding program with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which offers discounted asset finance to help medium-sized businesses improve their energy efficiency. Now, I wanted to also highlight two other recent examples of work underway in the institutional business. We recently piloted the trading of tokenized carbon credits using ANZ's Australian dollar stablecoin. The transaction was successfully executed with long-term customer, Victor Smorgon Group. Finally, we have a memorandum of understanding to develop a carbon farming and biodiversity project.
This will support our customers by contributing to supply, market-making, and distribution capabilities for high-quality carbon credits. The project is expected to provide opportunities for rural landowners in the Wheatbelt community in Western Australia and allows us to develop the project with major corporate customers, INPEX and Qantas. It will combine native reforestation and biomass harvesting to develop a carbon farming and renewable biofuels project. Now, the diverse nature of these examples shows the breadth and growth in our environmental sustainability capabilities across the portfolio. Now, before I talk to our customer engagement strategy, I want to discuss how we're aligning our lending to the Paris Agreement goals. We were the first Australian bank to sign up to Net Zero Banking Alliance, the NZBA. The NZBA commits us to aligning our lending portfolio with the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
We are on track to set targets for nine priority sectors. Now, we commenced this work last year, setting emissions intensity targets for power generation and large scale commercial real estate. We've been continuing that work, and later this year, we will be announcing targets for oil and gas and building products. Our target pathways and disclosures make very clear how we are aligning our lending to the Paris Agreement goals. Our disclosures are TCFD-aligned, and our target setting is guided by the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials or the PCAF standard. This is consistent with good global practice. Let me now turn to our customer engagement program. As we previously said, the most important role we can play is to help our customers reduce their emissions and shift to low carbon operations.
In our ongoing engagement with 100 of our highest emitting customers, we consider that three key elements constitute a robust low carbon transition plan: governance, targets and disclosures. In our customer discussions, we explore each of these three areas. To illustrate this, let me step you through an example of engagement with one of our key energy customers and how that's evolved over the past few years. Our first discussion focused on the customer's approach to climate, their strategy, and what good practice looked like for the sector. Essentially, we were seeking to understand their approach. Our second engagement was centered on their emissions reduction targets. Our third engagement followed the customer's public release of their climate change statement with clear targets. At that time, we also discussed their proposed governance frameworks. Our most recent engagement this year was also broadened to include biodiversity matters.
Now, while this customer is a large emitter, their immediate biodiversity impacts are relatively low given operations are at established sites. Therefore, discussions have focused on how they are working towards more positive biodiversity impacts through the progressive rehabilitation of mine sites. Now, we feel we're assisting customers to make real progress with their transition plans as our engagement deepens over time and as we provide more products and services to assist. Now, biodiversity has become a new topic of engagement, and this year is included in our customer conversations. For example, a large commodity customer in the top 100 group is talking to us about how they're identifying and understanding the material biodiversity issues at their operations, including deforestation management and an audit of wildlife sightings to ensure more robust measurement.
Finally, several months ago, I met with key customers, regulators, and peers in the UK and the European Union to discuss their responses to climate change. Several themes came up frequently in our conversations, and these included the pace of the greening of the financial economy, including portfolios and product development, and also how it impacts the real economy. Prudential policy and insights into banks' balance sheets and models that were exposed to climate risk, including data quality. Finally, the importance of building internal capability and capacity to support the transition, including the use of partnerships to bring in specialist expertise where needed. An example for us is our partnership with Pollination. The discussions were an opportunity to get a pulse check and some guidance on what may come next here in Australia.
We're confident we're well-positioned for the future and looking forward to the opportunities that come. With that, let me hand back to Shayne for question and answer. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. Operator, over to you for the first question, please.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your first question comes from Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the presentation. I wonder if I can direct my first question to Ms. Carnegie in relation to, I guess, the journey that you're on for how much housing property in the mortgage book is at risk, physical risk from climate change, and whether the lending systems are at in terms of, I guess, declining loans to properties in at-risk places, please.
Thanks very much for the question. Actually, it's something that Kevin Corbally and I were discussing. I might. Kevin, do you wanna pick this up?
Rob, hi. Look, it's something that we've been looking at quite extensively over the course of the last couple of years. There's a lot of work going on in it. We've also done some work in conjunction with our principal regulator, APRA, in terms of the climate vulnerability assessment. We've also done some specific work looking at certain areas in particular, which may be more prone or subject to flooding or maybe more prone or subject to bushfires, et cetera. At this stage, there's still more work for us to do on it. I don't envisage us necessarily producing or releasing anything in the near term on it. I think it's something obviously over the next couple of years, we probably will look to do that on.
Okay. Thanks, Kevin Corbally. I guess just as a follow-up if I can. Do you feel comfortable that you've got the lending screens for new business such that other banks who are working on this are not just kind of giving you the properties they don't want?
Can I maybe answer that a little bit, Rob? I know you know this, and please, we don't lend to homes, we lend to people. Those people we lend to on the basis that they can afford to repay that loan from their income and maintain a decent life and be able to do that. They provide the house as security. You know, I think I know you know that, but I think it's important just to remind ourselves of that. Our job is to make sure that we're lending to people who are good people with the right character and have the right levels of income and prospects for the future. No, I don't think there's an adverse selection risk there.
That's not to say we completely ignore the location of somebody's home or their business or the nature of the asset. Again, I don't mean to diminish it, but it is secondary to the income producing nature of that person, their ability to repay from their employment.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Elliott. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's the good nuanced answer. If I can ask a question to Mr. Whelan about the institutional client conversations that are going on. Have you come up against a situation where you come out of the meeting and you go, "Well, those guys don't get it. We better work our lines down over time." Have you gotten to that point in the conversations?
Occasionally, to be honest. But this has been developing now. The conversations have progressed and have got probably deeper and more nuanced as well at the same time over the course of the last two years. We're finding that the vast majority of the customers that we're having discussions with, particularly the top 100, there's others now that are coming to us that are outside the top 100, where we're having similar conversations at their request, are very keen to understand what's happening in the marketplace and how they are part of the solution with climate change. It's in general, most of the conversations, the vast majority, I should say, are very positive in nature.
Occasionally we've had one or two where we've felt that their strategy and what they're looking to do is not necessarily as advanced as many others. In that instance, what we do to 'cause there'd probably be a follow-up question here, would be that we would have further conversations with them around that being misaligned with the way we see our portfolio moving, and we would then have discussions around what that means for our continued relationship. It's very much in the minority.
Yeah. I'd add to that, Rob. I
Yeah.
I distinctly remember one that Mark and I were on together, actually, and we did walk away from that meeting. We were a little bit concerned. To be fair, it was more common early on. I think the
Yes.
To your point, Mark, it has evolved and, like, you'd have to be living in a cave if you didn't realize that this was an issue. People do get it. Essentially what we do is, not formally, there's almost like a watchlist where we basically say, "Hey, this deserves further scrutiny.
Yes.
and follow-up and interrogation," and that's precisely what we do. I again agree with Mark, it was more early on as we're getting into this. To be fair, I think it wasn't necessarily 'cause we're a bit of a leader in this space. Customers were a little, sometimes, not many, but some were a little bit surprised, like, "Why are you asking these questions?" right, as a bank. I think some of it was they're not necessarily prepared as well.
No.
So it's a-
That's well behind us now, actually.
Yeah.
Very well behind us now, Rob.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, good to hear. Thank you very much for the answers in the presentation. Much appreciated.
Thanks, Rob.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jonathan Mott from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hello. I've got a question for Maile, just following on from your presentation. Thank you for that. You talk a lot about the early indicators that you're looking for, and I understand going through the transaction accounts is of great value. A lot of loans are now coming through the broker channels, and you might not necessarily hold the transaction account, which will make it a lot more difficult to do this for these customers. Can you just give us a feel for what percentage of the front book, so the loans originated really in the last two years during COVID, you do not hold the transaction account with, so it is very difficult to do the data analytics and early indicators that you're looking to do?
Thanks. It's a great question, and actually, a lot of the data we're starting to build in is from third parties versus just looking at the transaction account. Some of the granularity that I'm talking about, we increasingly are getting from, you know, as I said, to third parties versus just needing to look at the transaction account. The way to think about the people we have, you know, who, where we hold that transaction account or have a decent amount of data on them, as you would know, we do have the majority of our loans going through brokers. We're, you know, up in the high fifties at the moment.
The reality is that about 70% of those people have a very active relationship, are already ANZ customers, of which we have pretty good data for. Now, in some cases, it might just be their credit cards, but in many cases it's also their transaction account. I can get the specific data. I know that the vast majority of the people coming through brokers are ANZ customers, and we do have good data on them to do the analytics I'm talking about.
Okay. Just following on, I think you said 70% are existing ANZ customers.
Yeah.
Has that changed over time? The front book, is that different from the back book?
We're not seeing a significant change.
Great. Thank you.
The only thing I'd add, Jonathan, it's a good question. The other thing I would add to it, while there's undoubtedly merit in doing a customer by customer understanding, there's also just the generic trend by just having that massive data.
Yeah.
Just seeing what's going on in the portfolio. I know you know that. There's also, it's about knowing individual loans, but actually just knowing cohorts, you know. Your ability to analyze that data, what's happening in Queensland versus Victoria, what's happening with people with this job or that job or all of that sort of stuff in general is also really valuable.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Johnson from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have two questions, if I may.
Yep.
The first one is, if we have a look at slide 12, which is as at March, and the real problem that we've got is we've had rate rises in April, May, June, July, August, September. At March, the cash rate was 10 basis points. It's now 235 basis points. When I look at the slides, I can see that 2% were overdue at March. I can see 40% of the book was on time or less than one month ahead, and you've very kindly given us the split. Shayne, am I right in sensing that you're kind of flagging that perhaps it's deteriorated a little bit since March?
Oh-
If so, could we get some commentary on where you see it right now?
Sure. I mean, it's a really good point, Brian, and clearly the issues around. There's a disclosure issue here. Which these are the last data that we disclosed, and we don't disclose those on a quarterly timetable, so that'll be available at the next full year results. What we didn't wanna do is go down the rabbit hole of sort of picking certain points of data we disclose more fully. So we're not trying to hide anything. Again, the point that Maile was making in her talk was this was the state of people going into the rate rise. So this was the starting point as we've gone in, so people were well-positioned going in. Kevin might wanna add, but in general, he'll have. What we're seeing is continued strength of our customers.
The mere fact that, you know, I'm just looking at the same page. If you just look. Again, you know this, but if you just look at the number of people who are so far ahead. If you're two years ahead, that means even despite all those rate rises, those customers haven't felt anything from a rate rise because they're still paying the same amount every month because they were so far ahead. All that's happened is the term. That was the purpose of the slide. Kevin, is there anything we can say?
Shayne, yeah, Shayne, the only thing I'd probably add.
Yep.
to what you've said is that, I think it's important when you look at two things. One, when you look at the 40% that are on time, the reason for that, in most cases, is actually structural. It's because they've taken out a fixed rate loan, it's because it's an investment property as such, so they've kind of structured it in a way whereby it makes sense for them to be on time with their repayments, or it's because they're a new customer, as in they've joined in the last six months. That's the vast bulk of that 40%.
Of the 2% that are overdue, what I'd actually say, that is if they're overdue even by a day, what we've continued to see since March, and Brian, you would have seen it in our June Pillar 3 results as well, our delinquency, as in 90-day past due numbers, have continued to come down over that period too as well. That's probably, Shayne, the only thing I'd add to what you said.
The thing that where I can give you a bit more data or a bit more insight, Brian and others, isn't around that data in particular, but every day we get You know, Maile. I get it. We get the daily balance sheet and the movement of every single product we have in Australia. Retail deposits have actually held up. Now, I know that's not entirely just about offsets and what's in this account, but if you just look about the amount of liquidity in our retail customer base, those deposit levels have held up. Now, they're not rising anymore. They're not going up like they have been until recently, but they're holding up. The only area we've started to see the turn of the corner has been in small business.
Small businesses, over the year to date, they're still on average holding higher deposits than they did a year ago, but it's starting to reduce. Not in a rapid way, but it's starting to come down as people start to use that money. Now, you have to be a little bit careful in small business because some of that's seasonal. We know, for example, we're entering into a period for many of our farm and agri customers, a normal time of drawdown. Anyway, that should hopefully give some sense that, from our perspective, the balance sheets still remain in pretty robust shape. You had a second question?
Yeah. Oh, Shayne.
Oh, go on. Yeah, go on.
Yeah. Shayne, I'll just make the observation. I suppose what concerns me, loan losses never come from averages, they come from the extremes with it.
I understand.
Just because the household has got excess deposits, doesn't mean he's gonna help out his neighbor who doesn't. If you look at the slides, 40% of the book are on time when rates were a lot lower. We can see that of that 40%, 20% are brand new accounts, 24%, and even the 43% that are fixed, their repayment's gonna go up a lot, which brings me on to the second question, if I may.
Sure.
I asked about this at the last result, and I would beg you guys to really think about it. There are two banks in Australia that do not disclose what their downside scenario actually is. ANZ is one of them. When I have a look at your base case as at basically March, the last data point, it looks now way too optimistic, saying house prices will be up 8% over the course of 2022 and then fall 5.8%. Could we get some kind of commitment that when the next result comes out, because things are clearly deteriorating, could we get some kind of commitment that we'll get a little bit more disclosure to see what the downside scenario is and what the weighting basically is there?
Because it's a bit hard to assess ANZ's provision cover when we don't know what the inputs actually are.
No, well, we're not gonna give you that commitment today. That's something that we'll consider, Brian. I think from your previous question, you just pointed out the danger we have when we selectively disclose parts of data. You know, it's easy to pick and choose the data to support your thesis. I understand there's a concern. Nobody's sitting here for a minute suggesting there's not gonna be stress in the home loan book. Of course there is. To your point, rates have risen quite dramatically and may go higher. Of course there are going to be people, and I totally understand the point. It's not about the average, it's about the tail. You know, we can't disclose all the detail for our million homeowner customers in their individual circumstances. I know you're not asking for that.
We try to give the disclosure as best we can, and I think me and Maile's point was before we're able now using data to have much greater insight into individual situations to the extent we can. I take the point, not for a minute trying to fudge the fact or just talk about averages. We're not deluding ourselves. Clearly, we are very attuned and very aware of the risks that sit in a book of this scale. Did you wanna add anything in terms of the downside or what we're thinking?
Shayne, the only thing I'd add. Two things. One, I think Brian's feedback is very valid, and we'll definitely take that on board. There's a lot of work going on at the moment right now, actually, on each of those scenarios. If you look at it, though, the weightings that we had in our assumptions at the half year were more skewed to the downside and the severe side than they were actually to the base case. But Brian's point's valid. It's kinda hard to, if you don't actually know what that means.
Sure.
We will definitely take that on board, and we'll look at what we can do for this year's results. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Triggs from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Maybe just for Shayne or Mark. The slide 31 around the progress you're making with the top 100 emitters. To your earlier point, Mark, suggesting that in the early stage of this that it wasn't particularly well thought through by some of your customers. Comparing that chart to last year, and I know the disclosure is slightly different, it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of movement over the last year from that sort of 20% of the tail that hadn't really, you know, thought about it. I mean, or at least have public plans for and this is not a new issue. It's obviously been a few years that climate change has been at the forefront of these large emitters.
You would think would have been at the forefront of their minds. Is there any worry there that the stranded asset risks here are a little bit more substantial than you might have thought?
Yeah. I think it's important just to get the data right. This is 2021 data. Yeah, we haven't updated the data, Andrew.
There's just no...
Yeah.
Okay.
We will.
Is there a reason why not, Shayne?
It's just the same issue we had before. It's just about disclosure. We will go through as our normal year-end. We will update it at the full year results. You know, apologies for that. We should have made that clearer. You're right. You can give some contextual-
Yeah, I can give you a general.
Without the data just.
General view. I think the first thing I'd say is that the group of 100 is actually a little bit of a moving feast as well, Andrew, because some will come off for reasons like we may have exited a customer, we've reduced the exposures to a point where it's no longer, you know, relevant to be in the top 100 for us. What we do is we add more in. Some of them might be, you know, they're obviously at a different starting point, or potentially at a different starting point.
In general, I think we've seen a shift up, and which you'll see through the data, into our what we call our A and B categories, which are the stronger categories and within the D to Cs. That's you know certainly a move in the right direction, but the 100 isn't a static number. There is some that come off and we put others in. Invariably, they start around the D or C, D or Cs.
The other thing we've done, Andrew, 'cause it is, and it is a good question. We've had this debate at the committee I mentioned, the ERBC. One of the things we've been debating is sort of once you've had the conversation with the top 100, and taking Mark's point that it moves, what do you do then? Do you go to the next 100? You know, like, 'cause we could have just said, "Oh, let's just keep going." We made a decision, and you know, people will have a different view, but actually the best thing we could do is continue to focus on those large 100 and see this chart move, actually see that migration so that the Ds go down and we see a migration up.
That would be the best single thing we could do in terms of enabling transition as opposed to let's just move on and do the next hundred, which would be lower impact. We will give updates on that at the full year results in terms of where we are.
Shayne, are you able to say what the total exposure at default is to those top 100 emitters?
It's a really good question. I guess we are able to do so. We're not prepared to do so today. It's a good question. Well, I think that's a very reasonable request, actually. I think we'll take it on notice. I think the issue there, as Mark said, the names won't stay the same, but nonetheless, we could give you a sense of how large that exposure is to that hundred. That's fair.
The other thing, Andrew, is that it, just to give you some context too, the top 100 represents about, I think it's about 30% of national emissions in Australia. It's a substantial amount, but I take your point about the EAD. We do that for certain sectors, as you're aware, but for the top total 100-
That's correct.
We can consider that.
Just to that sort of broad point, I mean, the stranded asset risk, are you becoming more or less comfortable over time with how you'll manage that, the transition of some of these customers who might at one point face, you know, challenges of staying in business?
I think we're getting much better at it.
Yeah.
The fact is, again, this is not a, you know, it's not something that's just recent, but the mere fact that we are talking to these customers intensely, not a casual conversation, like planned, intense conversation around these things, means our level of awareness of those assets, to your point, which ones we do have a view have the potential to be stranded, and really understanding these companies' strategy and what they're doing about it, has put us in a much stronger position. Again, I look, there'll always be those that resist change. The whole point of these conversations is to assess these customers move away from those stranded assets and to help them be a part, you know, be a positive force in terms of the transition.
We're in a much better position of understanding than we would've been before we undertook this approach.
Look, many of these customers, Andrew, I mean, they're very aware of that issue obviously themselves, and they're therefore really moving quickly around their own portfolios. That's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say is remember our exposures as a bank tend to be very short in nature, if you look at it from a transition sense. I think the average length, duration of our loan book is somewhere around 2.5-3 years. So it's relatively short. We look at all of those issues, but you know, invariably, we look at the 100 and say, "Okay, well, where do we think they are in this transition curve?" As Shayne said, I think many of them are moving in the right direction.
Thanks, Mark. Sorry, just the other question I had was around financial wellbeing. It's obviously the key theme through your presentation, Maile. Can you point to, I mean, what's ANZ doing with respect to the, I guess the, what's regarded as the loyalty tax on home loan pricing? The RBA data suggests that the front-to-backbook gap has obviously got wider over time. You know, some other banks have loyalty.
Rewards embedded into pricing now. Are there any such products at ANZ? You know, will those be considered?
I mean, when I take a longer-term look at, you know, where margin has gone in the home loan business, there is no doubt that it has gone squarely to our, you know, our customers. Whether it's in front book or back book, you know, just overall, there's probably been a halving of the kind of the return that we're getting on assets in the retail, you know, business and in particular in home loans. I think it's hard to not look at it and say that customers aren't benefiting in terms of margin being, you know, funneled their way. Do we have specifically a loyalty-based product like the one you're referring to? We don't have one on ANZ.
You know, we are testing one in market with a business that we've got equity in. Just to kind of see what the customer reaction is more broadly. No, we don't have one at the moment on the ANZ brand.
Thanks, Maile.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Ed Henning from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Look, today you've talked about your sustainable finance targets. Can you just talk about the margins on the renewable financing? Are they shrinking with, you know, every bank targeting energy transition? If you look at your institutional book, are those margins different from your traditional lending?
Yeah, Ed, it's a very good question, and we're watching this pretty closely. As you know, there is a mountain of money in the marketplace, be it from banks or funds that are looking to participate in this transition. So as transactions, we're seeing transactions come up, what I would say is that, you know, if you go back 12 months ago, the margins were somewhat similar. I think more recently they're slightly lower, but not significantly lower. You've also seen more recently a move away from bonds into more loans. You've seen that generally across the portfolio, not just in sustainable deals. There's different things at play here. The returns have held up reasonably. Do I think they'll get further pressure? Yes.
Which is why I mentioned right at the outset, what we're looking to do is to be part of the transition, but navigate a way where we're supporting customers who traditionally have obviously supplied us, not just a lending relationship, a relationship that's much broader than that with regards to payments and cash management and markets, so that the overall return that we get is acceptable to the cost of capital that we have. It's not an easy task, but we review each of these transactions that are delivered to us very closely. A lot of them will come to myself and to Kevin and even Gerard Brown.
We'll look to either participate or not based on, does it meet our disclosures and our pathways where we're heading, so that we're consistent with what we're talking to the external market, and then obviously what it does with regards to our returns for shareholders. It's an inexact science, Ed, but we're seeing that we can still navigate that at this point.
I totally agree with everything Mark said. It's a really good point, Ed. You are absolutely right that that is what's happening. There's this wall of money, not just bank money, by the way, investors looking for green assets to acquire. I think it goes back to the basics of our business model and Institutional, which is the classic sort of originate and distribute. Our job is to originate and distribute. The measure of success for us isn't how much green energy we have on our balance sheet, but it's how much green financing we are enabling through our Debt Capital Markets, syndicated loans and other things. Now, obviously, part of that ends up on our balance sheet.
It's just, it's not a different business model, it's just, it's a slightly higher bar than it is in our normal business. You know, to some extent, we want the least amount of that stuff of any loans on our balance sheet because of the capital requirements, as you well know, as a bank. The good news is, there's a really robust growing market for green financial assets out there, and that's a good thing for a bank like us, particularly given our international footprint.
Yeah
the strength of our financial institutions business. Let's not forget, that is our single largest customer base. We're in a great position to be able to benefit from this originate distribute model. Our distribution reach is much greater than our peers here in Australia, and really is a, you know, in particular Asia-Pacific franchise strength for us.
That's helpful. Thank you. Just one more question if I can.
Yep.
Can you just clarify the areas where you're running down or shrinking your lending exposure or completely, or plan to completely run it down, on the institutional side?
Are you talking, like, in the sort of climate-related exposures? Well, we've mentioned previously that we've had a step back and step out approach on thermal coal mining as an example. But that was something that we started in conversations with our customers in that space probably six years ago now, Ed. We'd said that we would be out of thermal coal mining by 2030, and we're very well progressed with regards to that. That would be an example. On the oil and gas, we'll be talking about that later in the year, as I mentioned in my opening statements. They'd be examples of where we've started to step down.
By the way, that's only in a climate sense, but we obviously look at where there's other risks in certain industries which we're less comfortable with, and we may not exit those sectors, but we will reduce exposures when we feel that the climate isn't looking good, want of a better term, over the next 2-3 years.
I think it goes back to Brian's question, actually, Ed, which is to do with the tail, right.
I don't know, and again, I know you know this. You know, thermal coal is probably in a category on its own where we can just say we're out. You know, oil, gas, I don't know it's about sectoral exits, but it is about the tail. Who are the largest emitters? Who are those companies who are high emitting plants who are not prepared to invest in transition? I think we're in that phase of our business, and so skewing our capital to those who get it, who have credible, robust transition plans, and moving our capital away from those who don't, as opposed to a sort of an industry, you know, pick and mix of which industries we support and which we don't.
I mean, there might be a c ase for that in the future, but I don' t think that's where we are at the present.
Yeah. Overall for the portfolio too there, Ed, you know, I would say that, you know, we've been positioning the portfolio for some time now to be more capital light, to Shayne's point. More DCM, more markets as a mix of our business, and less in loans. Even within the loans, we're looking to put that to sectors that we think provide a better return on a standalone basis of the loan, let alone the cross-sell.
Financial institutions is a very good example of that, where we've shifted the portfolio up in a dollar sense to the FIG space, which we think is a very good sector that we're very strong in.
Okay. That's great. Thank you for that.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Whittaker from New South Wales Treasury Corporation. Please go ahead.
Hi, Shayne. Thanks for the presentation. My question relates to the engagement program. Looks like you're making some good progress. Thanks for the information on slides 31 and 32. How do you ensure the engagements and the assessments and the strategies that your customers are putting in place are of the granularity needed to achieve the risk management objectives being sought? You know, there's some interesting detail here, and there's some green ticks, and that looks great. But, you know, how
Yeah.
How much detail goes into really assessing whether that?
Yeah.
Is the right color?
Yeah, great.
You know, how should we think about that as investors?
Yeah, it's a good point. We love a good green tick. No, but, I think, Mark, it's a good question about. I think it's important, and Mark will, give you some more. We asked the same question early on, because anybody can sit here and say, "Oh, we had a chat with so and so about their emissions plan, and it all looks good," you know? Clearly, it's more robust than that. It's quite a, we think, a pretty high bar, and it's not a one-time thing. Do you just wanna talk through. 'Cause, as you can imagine, our board committee asked similar questions about. 'Cause, you know, we take this as seriously as we do any sort of financial reporting. There needs to be robust, you know, evidence trail behind here. Yeah.
governance to say, "No, no," 'cause this is disclosed data, and we, you know, we have to have a trail to say, how do we get comfort for a green tick versus an orange. But do you wanna talk a little bit more about the process behind it? Yep.
Yep. So we have regular meetings, David, with the customer base. The relationship managers will be the normal face to that. Then there'll be opportunities with myself and Shayne and Kevin and others who meet with the senior people at these companies, be it CEOs or CFOs, where we talk about the same issues. What we look for is in the clarity and whether it's deepening around strategy, the first thing. What is their strategy?
What's the governance structure that they've put in place so, you know, at board level? Shayne explained what we're doing here at board level and then operationalizing that within other committees within the executive. We seek to understand that. We look at the targets that they're talking about and are publicized externally, and then we look at. Sorry, the targets and also the disclosures that they're making, if they're consistent with their targets. Finally, we track real progress. You know, have they been making real progress over the year? What activities have they done with their portfolio? Have they invested more in clean energy? Have they sold other things that are more carbon intensive? How are they shifting their own portfolios?
It comes from constant interaction with the customer, us then looking at what the real progress is and checking that against their own public disclosures, and through our own private discussions, and it's a combination of all of those matters. We make a judgment around that, which is at the front line in the business, and then it's also overseen by our centralized area within the bank around our ESG policies and the alignment of that with our customers and our own lending.
Okay. Thank you. Just if I could ask, the emissions, the references are on 32 to emissions targets. Is it Scopes 1-3 that you're focusing on or just one and two?
I think when we're looking at what we've got with regards to our disclosed, it's one, two, and three. We progressively will move to three with different sectors. With the caveat that the data around this is pretty inconsistent globally, around whether you're you know what particular measurement you're looking at, first of all, 'cause there's different ones, absolutes and others. Then you and how you're measuring that exposure. The actual data and the ability to have that published and calculated in a consistent manner globally, David, is really still under development globally. That's one of the things I heard when I was in Europe and the UK. For example, in the UK, they do have a form of measuring households' emissions. They have a
They put something in place.
It's, I would say, less than accurate. In Australia, we don't have that. It is different by sectors, but the data quality, I think, still has a long way to go in this space.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Stuart Palmer from Australian Ethical Investment. Please go ahead.
Thank you. This one, first one at least, is a bit of a follow-up, I think, to that, the previous first question, which was around. I guess we're all getting a little bit better at talking the climate talk.
Mm-hmm.
The challenge is matching that to action. You've mentioned looking at strategy, looking at targets, looking at progress. I wonder if you could tell us how you would think about capital expenditure by clients. You know, new capital going out the door on significant new infrastructure, I mean, seems to us to be a pretty good indicator of the reality of-
Yeah.
sort of climate ambition and direction of travel. You know, we're seeing in different sectors and including some of the sectors you're gonna be talking about later in the year, oil and gas and building materials.
Yeah.
Some significant CapEx, long-lived infrastructure, without much transparency at all or analysis being given to the market about how, you know, the case. If the company indeed is making the case that this is aligned with a transition, we're not seeing that. What would the bank look for in those sorts of circumstances? And what might be a trigger for you saying, "Hey, we need to exit this relationship?
Yeah.
In terms of that new infrastructure?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, and again, we're talking generics here, but it's all about, so not only understanding what people are saying, and what they're telling us they're doing, but actually we need to see the evidence, right? You know, are they doing what they said they were doing? Are they, to your point, Stuart, are they allocating capital? Are they investing in what they said they would do? Now, there's, you know, to some extent, there's sort of two types of. I mean, it'll be more complex than that. Two types of corporate lending. There's the sort of fungible, untargeted working capital, where we lend money to a company for sort of general purposes. You know, that's a lot 'cause money largely is fungible, it's hard to know precisely where that money went.
A lot of what we're talking about here is kind of targeted project finance, infrastructure spending, where it's very clear, you know, you're gonna go and build a wind farm, and that's where the money went. Or we're gonna go and refit an electricity generation plant to lower emissions, and that's what the money went. We do pay a lot of attention to the use of funds. By the way, that's not new to banking. That's always been the case. That's why banks are actually pretty good in general. We don't always get it right at this because we passionately care when we lend money to somebody, what they do with it and whether it's going where it's supposed to go. I think we're pretty good at ensuring that.
To your point, making sure that customers are backing their intentions with the actual capital investment, and that goes into the assessment. Now, I will say that's actually what is really attractive about this whole sector and about financing the transition for a bank like ANZ. This is not all about risk management. It is about risk management. It's not all about risk management. It's also about opportunity. The reality is there's going to be significant, as we know, amounts of capital required to finance the transition. That's why we, you know, that's an opportunity for us. That's why we made a decision that the single best thing we can do to ensure a just transition around climate change is actually finance and back those high-emitting customers to get better. Yeah?
That's a transition, and just exiting those sectors might be required, but in and of itself doesn't really achieve anything. The best thing is to work with the emitters, provide capital under tight conditions to ensure and make sure that they invest it to improve and to actually finance that transition. You know, as you've, you know, everybody's throwing around huge numbers. There's huge opportunity and, you know, we feel really, really well positioned to be able to enable that for a couple of reasons. These customers we already know. We have a global reach that a lot of our peers don't have, and it is a global challenge and opportunity, not just an Australian one.
Third, we're a leader in almost all of the capabilities you need to do to be able to do this, whether it's project finance, export credit agency work, whether it's Debt Capital Markets, syndicated loans, sustainable finance. You know, we have the capabilities that really enable us to back this. That's why you're seeing, you know, Mark's business really early success and leadership. But still a lot to learn, but that's why we're excited about the opportunity.
Well, thank you. I mean, just a follow-up.
Yeah.
On that distinction between project finance and general corporate facilities. Because it does seem to be an emerging sort of, unless there's a better word, I'm sure, a loophole in a lot of commitments, which we're seeing.
Yeah.
You know, we've had examples where, you know, a company's expanding its thermal coal operations. It's saying it's using its funding from a number of banks to do that. The banks are saying, "Well, we offer, you know, we've got some working capital facilities out to the same customer. That's not what we provided the money for." Of course, that's yeah, the money's fungible, but it's still being used to grow in ways.
Yeah.
which might indicate, you know, a lack of commitment to a real transition, so
Totally agree.
I'd love to.
Yeah.
Think about ways in which, you know, some of your policies and your tests for customers, if they are expanding, in-
Yeah.
In a way, new projects which aren't aligned or what does that mean for your corporate facilities?
I agree with you, and this is a gnarly problem, right? Because, you know, and I don't know that there's a formula or a policy or anything that can really deal with it. That's where we need to look these customers in the eye, and we have to have a high degree of trust, that these people get it, right? They understand the needs of the transition. They have governance in place to do it themselves, you know, from their boards all the way down, that they are committed to do it. Because at the end of the day, you know, to your point, money is largely fungible.
If we saw that, and again, your example's a good one, and, you know, these can happen, where company A is doing the right thing over here, which we think we're financing, but they're also doing the bad thing over there. That's the kind of thing that's inconsistent. You know, in our terms, that would not meet the requirements in terms of our review of a customer in terms of being strategically aligned with what we want to achieve. That's exactly the sort of behavior we would say, "That's not credible. That is not trustworthy or credible, and it's not the kind of customer we need to bank." Now obviously it's not as black and white in that we're talking extremes there, but that is precisely the sort of stuff.
I know Mark has brought to me and our committee decisions exactly like the one you just talked about, where on their team's judgment, we can't back this customer. Even though the project that they're doing passes muster and we could get our head around it, we're not comfortable with the overall direction of the corporate.
Yeah. Stuart, I'd just very quickly add to that. It is. That's when it gets difficult and you have to ensure that you are still committed to the principles which we've already mentioned and spoken to our customer about. When we seek to understand their policies, we're also seeking for them to understand ours and how that glide path looks. When you get into that situation, which you just talked about, particularly in more corporate related facilities, what happens, you know, internally in our process is that I'll see that deal, I'll take it to Kevin Corbally, he and I'll discuss that. We also include Gerard Brown, who's head of sustainability for the group. We will talk about it, the opportunity. We'll also talk about what we're seeing from the customer with regards to their commitments and whether they're meeting them.
We'll make a determination on that. We'll also obviously talk to-
Yeah.
Shayne as head of the RBC. It gets an enormous amount of scrutiny, but it does get down to whether we believe that the particular company who we're supplying that corporate facility is really committed to this strategy. If it isn't, and this has been the case, we'll decline to participate.
Okay. Thank you. If, yeah, I mean, that analysis makes sense. I mean, Sometimes the word is, you know, we look at, we take everything as a whole and taking everything together, well, yeah, from our perspective, listen, if it's not aligned, it's not aligned. Yeah, there's that.
Yeah.
Credibility question about the commitment.
Yeah.
That's good to hear. Just quick final one, if I can.
Yeah.
Just you've mentioned biodiversity as being, yeah, part of something you're starting to talk to customers about. I mean, yeah, how are you thinking that might evolve? Australia's, you know, been called out globally as being a bit of a recalcitrant of some of the levels of deforestation, particularly in our agriculture sector. I mean, are you do you have, would you look at conditions, covenants around, you know, land clearing, deforestation for some of your or all of your agricultural lending?
Yes. The short answer to that is yes. I mean, you know, it's a maturity issue, right? So, you know, pick a number, but, you know, I don't wanna put a number on it 'cause I don't wanna be quoted back to me. We are some years behind in terms the way we think about biodiversity is the way we are thinking about emissions. Yeah? The same basic principles will apply. We will. I don't know what the equivalent would be, but we'll have to think about who are the customers that we bank that have a high impact on biodiversity. Again, we'll go and talk, I imagine, we'll go and talk. We'll take exactly the same approach. Let's measure our exposures. Let's understand what they're doing about it.
Do they get it? Do they understand? Are they investing in, allocating capital to resolve this problem? Do we think their values are strategically aligned with whatever the community has set in terms of aspiration there? Yeah, absolutely. I think again, I'm not the right person to ask, but 'cause I'm not the expert, but from my perspective, it feels to me that biodiversity is like the emissions things, but even a higher factor of complexity in my view. You know, if we think measuring emissions and things and Scope 3 is hard, I think the biodiversity one is even more, way more complex. Look, I might be wrong, I think it's fair to say we're all learning.
I think one of the things that, again, comes from one of the benefits of our international network is, you know, we don't just fly around to talk to people in different markets. You know, we have customers and businesses, particularly in Europe, which has traditionally been a bit further ahead on thinking on these things. We're able to sort of kick the tires, if you will, up in these markets with customers and understand what are regulators doing, what are community expectations, where are they headed, you know, what are, as I said, companies, regulators and others.
You know, see that as an early warning signal to say, "Hey, we need to be thinking about this." We did that on biodiversity quite a while ago, but it's fair to say Australia's not as well advanced in the thinking. You know, we will get there.
Thank you. I mean, the only comment I've had, certainly, obviously agree that biodiversity, the dimensions of it make it hugely complex. But I think, yeah, there's a parallel with climate.
Yep.
We've known for a while what the problem is. It's emissions in the air. I guess in the biodiversity context, one of the problems we've known about for a long time, and we've had targets, you know, sitting under some of the sustainable development goals to stop any new deforestation. I think the 2020 was one of the global targets. So yeah, there are particular-
Yes.
dimensions of biodiversity. You know, existing forest.
Which obviously.
Yes
has huge value as a carbon sink, but also, you know, for local native species. Yeah, it's pretty clear today that we shouldn't be knocking that stuff over when we actually do have enough cleared land available for food production and so on.
I agree with that.
I think that-
I agree, and I'm not.
Sometimes a bit simpler.
Yeah. I'm not suggesting we have to have it all perfectly wrapped up.
Yeah
With a bow on it before we start doing anything. I agree. There are some low-hanging fruit. That's probably not the right analogy this time. There are some easier things to do here, to your point about deforestation and land clearing, which we've had policies in place for a number of years. We're just saying it's getting more complex. The other thing I just wanna mention, because I think it's important, going back to governance. That's precisely why we have those committees and why we mention them.
Not only are we dealing with the here and now and the issues that the community and regulators and customers care about today, we also try to stay ahead, and so we use those forums to be thoughtful, to the extent we can, to learn, to hear from other markets, from other people thinking about some of these, what are the emerging issues that are coming. You know, biodiversity won't be the last one. There'll be other things. That takes us down.
You know, we look at a wide array of issues that have the potential to, you know, for the community and others to sort of really start to set new standards and making sure that we're thinking about our capital allocation, how we behave, who we bank, the things that we care about most in advance, and not just waiting to be told by a regulator or to be told through bad actions of others that these things matter. We try our best to stay ahead of it.
Yep. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your final question comes from Alison Ewings from Regnan. Please go ahead.
Thank you all for the presentation. As others have already said, it was great to hear more detail on your engagement with customers, and I have two questions relating to those discussions. Obviously, we need to reduce emissions in the real economy, not just in ANZ's lending book, in order to reduce.
Yeah
the systemic risks that will challenge both the banks and investors alike, so we've got a mutual interest in this one, I think. I was interested in what scrutiny you apply over how the reductions are achieved to try and ensure that these translate to reductions in the real economy as well as ANZ's own exposure.
That's a great question. You wanna talk about that? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it's a terrific question and we look at that with regards to each and every one of our customers and the real actions that they're taking. While we're talking about a net zero 2050 with all of the targets, the reality is that you want it to be, you know, heading towards zero. Therefore, you know, the use of things like carbon credits as an example, we think have a role to play in the transition, but not necessarily being the answer completely overall. It might be part of the initial answer, but longer term it's not.
Moving more to really clean, affordable, and reliable sort of energy sources, and also, you know, the consumers and how the energy's being consumed are all part of the answer to that question. We look to see, you know, if a customer is only looking to get, they're not really changing their business and they're actually using carbon credits as a way of them getting to their longer term target, we would think that may be an issue for us. At this point though, we feel that using offsets is appropriate, but as long as that's part of the solution, not the solution.
Yep.
Is that helpful?
Yeah. I was thinking also about the transfer of assets. It may be.
Yes
That the client no longer holds them, but they've simply sold them to someone else.
Well, that's exactly right. You know, obviously.
Yeah
that does occur. It has been occurring. Governments have been actually part of that, as you know.
Mm-hmm
... globally. So that will get down to, you know, the commitments by all parties to actually make it clean, affordable, and reliable, and I think we're still on that journey.
I mean, that's a much harder one for us to have an influence on.
Except we won't finance it.
We won't finance it under the new owners. You are seeing different forms of capital come in to support some of those industries that are, you know, in this case, high emitting. That is a challenge for the economy. You know, frankly, there's not a lot a bank can do about that other than make sure we, you know, lobby governments and others to make sure we're doing the right thing.
Yeah. That's a good point.
at economy level.
Lovely.
Yep. Yep.
Well, I think participation is an important lever on that one.
Yep.
Yes.
The second I was struck when you were talking about biodiversity, that you framed those discussions very much around the impact of the business on biodiversity. The example you talked about being low because it's from existing sites, and I think in answer to Stuart's question, you talked about the company's impact on biodiversity. I was interested about what extent you're also thinking about the impact of biodiversity loss on the businesses you'd lend to. For instance, the potential for scarcity within their supply chain.
Mm-hmm
If something becomes compromised, more about the risk to the business than the risk of the business to the environment.
Yeah.
We are doing both. I think, and certainly what we saw when we went to Europe earlier in the year, and we'll be doing these trips regularly because we think a lot of the thought leadership still is emanating from that part of the world. We know that what happens there tends to happen here, be it in a customer sense, but also in a regulatory sense. You know, our view is that we are nascent, if I can put it that way, in our approach to this, but we do look at the supply chain impacts on certain parts of our book at the moment. We are taking it into consideration.
We're building the internal muscle around the questions that we need to ask and where we apply it to our customers as we speak. I think it's fair to say we've got a little way to go on this one, but I think that's no different to what you're seeing in Europe and in other parts of the world.
Thanks.
Okay. I think that was our last question. Look, thank you everybody for joining us today. Once again, it was a very engaging conversation, and I hope you found it useful. We've obviously got a number of takeaways from it and some follow-ups, which we committed to. We do try to discuss issues that are topical to you and the market, as our owners and other stakeholders, but also issues that are really important to us. Going back to Alison's question there about not just our business, but are important to us in terms of the impact our customers have on the broader community. Hopefully we've achieved that today.
There are lots of things we can cover in these sessions, as you're well aware, but we try to make them contemporary with issues that are front of mind for our stakeholders, and hopefully we've achieved that. Thank you very much for your time and your questions.