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No win for bank in Games ads
25 Aug 2004
ANZ Bank is spending about $1 million on TV advertisements during Seven Network's coverage of the Olympic Games, telling viewers it's listening to customers and opening rural branches. The reality is that the bank is spending roughly the same amount on its ads as on boosting its rural banking presence, and only a small number of country branch openings are tentatively planned.
ANZ's head of rural banking, Mike Guerin, admitted the new openings - which may only amount to "two or three" a year - would come nowhere near restoring the rural banking levels of the early 1990s. Since then, ANZ has axed more than 100 regional and rural branches before calling a halt to the closures in 1999. Between 1990 and 1998, ANZ closed a total of 272 branches and 500 agencies, mainly in rural areas.
In the past three years, ANZ has opened only two rural branches: Margaret River in WA and Koroit in Victoria, and re-opened the NSW Merimbula outlet.
The Australian, 25/8/04.
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