By Eric Johnston
ANZ will be aiming to attract rich customers to the retail banking services of its expanding Asian business rather than chase market share.
The bank's Asia Pacific chief executive, Alex Thursby, said it planned to focus on the top 5 per cent to 10 per cent of retail customers in markets from Singapore to China as well as establishing dozens of additional branches in key markets in the region.
Mr Thursby acknowledged that ANZ was unable to compete head-to-head with giant regional players such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China or HSBC, but instead would seek wealthy customers.
''We cannot compete with the big scalable banks in retail and wealth across Asia,'' Mr Thursby said in Hong Kong. ''We're not looking to put in thousands of branches. Our position is around an affluent population.
''We're not a high market-share player … we want the affluent, the emerging affluent space of the retail banking business.''
He said ANZ was looking at building a ''seamless'' bank for customers, allowing them to access their banking facilities throughout Asia. This would also extend to arranging mortgages for customers in Asia who wanted to buy property in Australia.
Mr Thursby, a former Standard Chartered executive, said ANZ's earnings momentum across its Asia business was likely to flatten this year, pressured by a rising Australian dollar and its focus on integrating the Asian assets bought from Royal Bank of Scotland.
But he tipped ''high growth in earnings'' during 2011 in order to meet the bank's target of generating about $1.5 billion in earnings annually from the Asian business.
Further acquisitions by the bank would be approached as opportunities arose, but ''there's a lot we can do organically over the next three years that I think sits well for aggressive growth''.
Yesterday ANZ finalised the acquisition of RBS's retail and commercial businesses in Hong Kong. Those assets will give ANZ more than 40,000 customers and, strategically, are the most important part of the portfolio of Asian banking assets acquired for $US550 million ($602 million) in August last year.
Although ANZ is building its Asian footprint, analysts say the bank's presence throughout the region is piecemeal. Even with the addition of RBS's banking assets in Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia and Hong Kong, the bank has a modest presence in those markets.