Customers Stick With St. George After Westpac Merger

Post by Sharat on March 26, 2009 · Under Company News, banking · Comment 

Westpac Banking Corporation’s decision to maintain St George as a separate unit and brand has proven to be a prescient one, with St. George reporting that there has been minimal leakage of its customer base with very few leaving for rivals.

St. George chief Greg Bartlett credited Westpac’s decision for maintaining bother brands and St. George’s banking strategy as the main reasons why customer attrition levels were so low and less than expected.

“We’ve been 3 1/2 months under the new model and we continue to report high levels of customer retention and staff engagement. We actually see more growth potential in St George than we have for a long time, because of the financial strength of the parent with its AA rating and the fallout for our competitors from the financial crisis.” Mr. Bartlett said.

During its December quarter trading update Westpac’s chief executive Gail Kelly that the retail and business banking business of St. George had a strong start, but that good earnings have been to some degree offset by increased provisions for bad debt.

Westpac reported that though St. George’s home loan delinquency rate was tracking marginally higher than the Westpac book, they continued to remain below industry average. This mainly reflected differences in product mix and a relatively higher exposure to the troubled NSW market.

Mr. Bartlett went on to say that St. George’s portfolio of low documentation loans constitutes roughly between 7 and 8 per cent of total residential lending and was performing “exactly in line with expectations”.

Compare Australian Bank Accounts

Bookmark and Share

Related posts

Tags: , , , ,

Comments

Leave a Reply







Sponsored Ads