St Gail
Australia, despite the best efforts of a determined cadre of Catholics from Sydney’s elegant and leafy North Shore, is yet to have a saint; the closest we have so far managed is the beatification of Mary McKillop.
The steps to sainthood are pretty clear, but primary among them is that somewhere along the line, you have to deliver a miracle and it has to be recognised by the Vatican.
The issue for Mary it seems is that her canonisation might be pipped by the eagerness for many in the Australian banking community to confer upon Gail Kelly a similar honour for what appears to be the saving of, and re-engineering of Westpac.
For those of you who don’t know the back story, Kelly left South Africa for Australia in the late 1990s.
She began as a teacher then flicked off to banking, initially as a teller, then to human resources. In Australia she popped up as GM of communications and strategy at CBA, before heading St George during the banking boom.
She was touted as a replacement for David Murray when he retired as CEO of St George, and apparently got pretty close, but the job went to Ralph Norris.
She then left St George, despite saying that she was committed to St George, joining Westpac in 2008. Westpac then, relatively promptly, took over St George.
It should be mentioned at this point that this is the only time in Australia’s history that the CEO of a bank has led the takeover of another bank of which they had previously been CEO.
What is more interesting though is that within Westpac we are observing two distinct cultures emerging – those that worship at the feet of Gail, and those that think she is less than saintly.
The worshippers are in the main ex- St George staffers and female. This is despite the fact she is not seen as a promoter of female staff and it’s notable that the gender of her management team is decidedly male, though this frankly isn’t out of tune with banks in general.
Her detractors seem convinced that she delivered St George to a point where it was at risk of being taken over, jumped ship to Westpac and then promptly exploited the situation of which she was the architect. And that she hasn’t done anything special at Westpac.
Research carried out by CoreData during the takeover and immediately after the takeover showed that St George customers were stressed by the idea that they would be lost after the takeover and that they would receive worse service.
The current strategy at Westpac, which is re-doing all the work of the last decade in which branches effectively became dumb ends of the central bank, is to deliver a customer centric view of the world.
This is also the strategy of CBA, NAB and ANZ, though each are approaching it somewhat differently. CBA are focusing on service (proposing in full page newspaper ads that they may astonish customers), ANZ are telling us that we are busy and that they know about it (we live in your world) and NAB are discounting to success (focusing on fees).
The curious thing is that all the banking data we have at the moment suggests that it’s working. In retail banking, business banking and mortgages, the Westpac numbers have been steadily improving from 2008, moving from the top of the bottom quartile for customer acquisition efficiency and satisfaction to the middle of the top quartile.
Perhaps it’s time for a special note to the Vatican and if this miracle is recognised – then St Gail may well beat St Mary to the punch.
One Comment on “St Gail”
Post a comment
The Editor says:
David Murray was CEO of Commonwealth, not St George. Gail left CBA for St George, then went from St George to Westpac. The rest of the story may be correct, but it makes you wonder!