Westpac Banking Cp Ord (WEBNF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Westpac's 2024 interim results. My name is Justin McCarthy, General Manager of Investor Relations. Before we begin today, I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the country we are meeting on today. I pay my respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations people present today. The results will be presented by our CEO, Peter King, and CFO, Michael Rowland. At the end of the presentation, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions. To ask questions, please press star one. With that, over to you, Peter. Well, thank you, Justin, and good morning, everyone. I summarise this as a good result as we've navigated below-trend economic growth in a competitive banking sector. We've been disciplined, balancing growth and margins well, and over the year we've grown in all key segments with mortgages up 5%, while business loans and consumer deposits both grew 9%. Growth has been off the back of customer service improving. In consumer, the service focus sees the Westpac app rated number one, mortgage approval times being cut in half and MPS up. In business, time to decision for loans is down 19% and we improved our merchant offerings through the launch of new terminal and digital capabilities. While in WIB, we have improved our rankings in key financial market surveys. From a balance sheet perspective, we're in great shape. In particular, the strong capital position allows us to return $1.5 billion in surplus capital via a special dividend and a further share buyback. In risk management, it was a big half as we completed the critical milestone in the core program, being the completion of the integrated plan. While the work on risk management is ongoing, the simplificatio...