As Shayne mentioned, 2024 has been a pivotal year in terms of progress on strategic goals.
Our financial performance this year showed resilience coming off a record year for the sector in FY23. When we look through what was in many ways a highly unusual year, our trends have been consistently strong.
Since FY21, Group Revenue has increased 19% with Profit Before Provisions up 20% and Cash Profit up 12%. This has been delivered in an environment characterised by inflation, heightened competition, and macro uncertainty.
In addition, we have taken steps in the year to optimise Group ROE including the divestment of our stake in AmBank, continuing the announced on-market share buyback and finally being able to deploy capital raised in FY22 towards Suncorp Bank.
This builds on the work we have done since 2016 to optimise capital allocation and productivity including:
Exiting of non-core businesses such as Asia Retail, Partnerships, Wealth, Insurance, and Dealer Finance, and
Reshaping Institutional to optimise ROE and reduce risk, with the business achieving a record RoE this year.
And delivering over $1.7 billion in cumulative cost savings. To put this in perspective this is equivalent to 16% of our current expense base.
Collectively, these initiatives have given us the capacity to invest in value accretive opportunities which have added capability and scale such as Transactive and ANZ Plus, and the acquisition of Suncorp Bank while returning capital to shareholders via buybacks and dividends.
Suncorp acquisition – Financial Impact
Suncorp Bank joined the Group on August 1 this year. Therefore, our financial results include two months of Suncorp Bank earnings as well as acquisition-related adjustments which we announced last week.
Group Revenue for the year on a constant currency basis was broadly flat compared to a record FY23 driven by strong ANZ performance and with only 2 months of Suncorp Bank financials included in FY24 results.
Additionally, the acquisition has increased scale in both our Australia Retail and Commercial businesses. On a consolidated basis, ANZ now holds the second highest customer deposit base relative to our domestic peers.
It is important to mention that the second half of FY24 includes two months of Suncorp Bank expenses, affecting both half-on-half and year-on-year comparisons.
I realise that comparisons this year are somewhat complicated by the Suncorp Bank acquisition and the accounting adjustments required, and so to be clear the Group Cash Profit for FY24 excluding the Accounting Adjustments was $6.92 billion.
