New Zealand’s largest bank is about to change hands at the top. ANZ Bank New Zealand has confirmed that chief executive Antonia Watson will retire on 30 September, drawing the curtain on a run at the helm that began in 2019 and a career with the bank that stretches back to 2009. Her successor will be the bank’s current chief risk officer, Ben Kelleher, whose appointment still needs a formal non-objection from the Reserve Bank before it can be confirmed.
Watson is widely regarded as one of the most powerful figures in New Zealand finance. She joined ANZ in 2009 after a stint with Morgan Stanley that included a Budapest based role overseeing business services and technology. At ANZ she rose through senior posts, including chief financial officer and managing director for retail and business banking, before stepping up as acting chief executive in May 2019 and taking the job permanently that December. She has run the bank through the Covid pandemic, a long stretch of high interest rates and a tense period of public scrutiny over bank profitability.
Much of that scrutiny landed squarely on her desk. During her tenure ANZ and the rest of the major banks were put under the microscope by the Commerce Commission’s market study into personal banking and by a parliamentary inquiry into banking competition, both of which questioned whether New Zealanders were getting a fair deal from a sector dominated by four big Australian owned lenders. ANZ chairman Scott St John credited Watson with being a steady hand and a balanced industry voice through that period.
“Modern CEOs have to deal with heightened customer, shareholder, staff, political and regulatory expectations and Antonia has done that exceptionally well,” St John said. He added that she had guided the business to consistently solid performances for shareholders through the pandemic and a series of global and local economic shocks.
The numbers underline how big the job is. ANZ remains the country’s biggest bank by a clear margin, although its grip has loosened a little. Its share of the home loan market eased to 29.8 percent as at March, down from 30.5 percent two years earlier, as rivals chased mortgage customers harder. The bank’s interim profit slipped 1 percent to 1.259 billion dollars, an 18 million dollar drop from the previous year’s record result. ANZ is also fighting a long running class action in the High Court, where its maximum potential liability has been put at around 125 million dollars, a case it continues to appeal.
Watson reflected warmly on her time in charge as she confirmed her departure. “I’ve loved every moment of my time at ANZ. I’ve had the privilege of working with some incredibly smart, hardworking and clever colleagues and customers,” she said. “I never aspired to be a CEO in my career but now count myself lucky to have led a company that is critical to New Zealand’s economic prosperity.” The bank says she plans extended travel after she leaves, while keeping an eye out for new professional and personal opportunities.
Into her shoes steps Ben Kelleher, who has been chief risk officer for more than two years. Before that he spent five years as managing director of personal banking, the division that handles the everyday mortgages, savings and transaction accounts of most ANZ customers, and he has also led the bank’s private banking and strategy teams. He holds a master’s degree in management, finance and economics. St John described him as “an outstanding people leader with a strong focus on customers and an understanding of how to run a big and complex company in a highly regulated industry.”
Kelleher takes over at an awkward moment for the economy. He has warned that New Zealand could be drifting towards a stagflationary patch, where weak growth sits alongside stubborn inflation, pointing to geopolitical headwinds, the path of interest rates and rising fuel costs as the main risks. That is a cautious read for an incoming bank boss, and it signals that lending growth and bad debts will be front of mind from his first day. Moving the bank’s top risk manager into the chief executive’s office also says something about where ANZ thinks the pressures of the next few years will sit, with regulation, capital rules and credit quality all looming large.
The handover is not a done deal until the Reserve Bank gives its sign off, part of the regulator’s wider push to vet who runs systemically important institutions. Assuming that approval comes through, Kelleher will formally take the reins on 30 September, the same day Watson walks out the door. For customers, the day to day experience of banking with ANZ is unlikely to shift overnight. The bigger question is whether a risk specialist at the top changes the bank’s appetite for competition at a time when New Zealanders, and their political representatives, are asking harder questions about what the big banks charge and how much they make. You can read more on the announcement at interest.co.nz and the New Zealand Herald.
What do you make of the leadership change at the top of New Zealand’s biggest bank, and does it matter to you who runs it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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