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Our Purpose and Strategy

Our expertise, products and services make us a bank. Our people, purpose, values and culture make us ANZ.

Our purpose

Our Purpose is to shape a world where people and communities thrive. It explains ‘why’ we exist and drives everything we do at ANZ, including the choices we make each day about those we serve and how we operate.

Our strategy

We bring our Purpose to life through our Strategy: to improve the financial wellbeing and sustainability of customers through excellent services, tools and insights that engage and retain them, and help positively change their behaviour.

Through our purpose we have elevated three areas facing significant societal challenges aligned with our strategy and our reach which include commitments to:

Improving the financial wellbeing of our people, customers and communities by helping them make the most of their money throughout their lives;
Supporting household, business and financial practices that improve environmental sustainability; and
Improving the availability of suitable and affordable housing options for all Australians and New Zealanders.

In particular, we want to help customers:

We will achieve our strategy through:

Propositions our customers love ... with easy-to-use services that evolve to meet their changing needs
Flexible and resilient digital banking platforms ... powering our customers and made available for others to power the industry
Partnerships that unlock new value ... with ecosystems that help customers further improve their financial wellbeing and sustainability
Purpose and values-led people ... who drive value by caring about our customers and the outcomes we create.

Our people listen, learn, adapt and do the right thing the first time - delivering the outcomes that address financial and sustainability challenges.

The Bank we're building

We know, from studying organisations globally, that companies with a clear strategy linked to their purpose outperform, over the long term, in terms of returns to shareholders, contribution to society and value to their customers – and the engagement of their staff.

"Over the last five years, we have made great strides, significantly simplifying the bank well ahead of our peers, enduring a once in a century global pandemic and laid the foundations for growth.”

In fact, ANZ’s motto Tenax Propositi (Tenacity of Purpose), adopted in 1951 when the modern ANZ was formed, holds this idea at its core.

By building the financial wellbeing and sustainability of our customers we will have a better reputation, a more engaged team, acquire customers at a lower cost, grow loyalty, generate better financial outcomes – and deliver more capital to reinvest in the business and continue to improve customers’ lives.

It’s a virtuous cycle, captured in this value wheel chart, and the essential philosophy of the Bank We’re Building. The growth in value of each of our businesses, in Australia, New Zealand or Institutional, can be understood in terms of this cycle.

To succeed we must employ people committed to our purpose who listen, learn and adapt. We need to equip them with the best tools and insights. We need to focus on those few things that really improve the financial wellbeing and sustainability of our customers.

Click here to listen to Shayne Elliott speak about "The Bank we're building". For further details refer to this article on ANZ's bluenotes .