Westpac CEO Recruits Key National Bank Executive

For immediate use

Wednesday 20 October 2004

Westpac CEO Recruits Key National Bank Executive

Strong leadership, customer focus and sound results have seen Westpac CEO Ann Sherry draw a key National Bank executive to the Westpac Executive Team.

Henry Ford, the National Bank’s General Manager Distribution, will shortly join Westpac as General Manager Consumer Banking.

Ann Sherry said: “I am looking forward to Henry adding to the sense of purpose and bench strength of the Westpac Executive Team, and helping us to build on our progress in 2004.”

Ford’s skills and experience will add further weight to Westpac’s key objective of ensuring that its customers have the best possible experience. “Done right, the customer interaction should improve customers’ circumstances and make their lives better,” he said.

He said he was looking forward to moving to Westpac. “The Executive Team have strong leadership in Ann and an understanding and a clear, customer-focussed vision of what they want to achieve, and that’s very attractive.”

“I’m also keen to contribute to Westpac’s leadership in the financial services industry in Corporate Social Responsibility, particularly as I view that commitment as being most evident through committed Westpac people providing superior customer service,” Henry Ford said.

Ann Sherry said she was also pleased to announce that Westpac’s current General Manager Consumer Banking, Ken Hodgson, and Head of Customer Experience, Judith Hanrahan, have both secured senior roles with the bank in Australia.

Ken will be General Manager Sales and Service, Northern Zone, based in Sydney and Judith will head the Business Lending Originations group, based in Melbourne. Both will begin their new roles in November – Judith at the beginning and Ken toward the end of the month.

“This is a recognition of the specific contribution that Ken and Judith have made to what has been a very strong year for Westpac, and of the overall quality of the Executive Team. I wish them both well,” Ann Sherry said.

The announcements came as Westpac recorded its best-ever result for customer satisfaction in the quarterly ACNielsen survey. For the September 2004 quarter, Westpac’s service was rated by 57% of respondents as excellent or very good, fourth of the five major banks (ACNielsen rates ANZ and National separately) but a 12% improvement over Westpac’s rating of 51% at the start of 2004.

“It’s clearly not where we want to be, but we’re continuing to head in the right direction. It’s the best result since the TrustBank merger in 1996,” said Westpac CEO Ann Sherry. “It’s very pleasing to see customer recognition coming through consistently, for the work done by our team of 6000 staff.”

ENDS

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