End of year CEO Message

A big THANK YOU.

As 2021 draws to a close, I’d really like to thank you all for your resilience, compassion and support over what has been another truly challenging year.

This year we continued to see the impact of the pandemic on our people, customers and communities, with extended periods of lockdowns particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. As we always say - people come first, now and always. To that point, safety and wellbeing is our top priority as we continuously monitor events and make adjustments to our business accordingly.  

I wanted to particularly acknowledge and thank our frontline teams who have constantly adapted to changing situations, to best serve their customers and communities.

Importantly, despite the difficulties of this past year, our business has many achievements to celebrate.

Our business has now considerably evolved for growth. 

We’ve continued to be deeply focused on our strategic pillars of people, customer experience, operating performance and business growth. There’s been significant investment in our business over the last few years, including infrastructure and systems, which have now been established to provide greater capacity for growth in 2022.

Key developments delivered by our people and partners over the year have included:

• The strengthening of our IT infrastructure and systems by the Tech Uplift project achieving greater operational efficiency and automation.
• Customer servicing enhancements to provide greater convenience and access (during shifting circumstances due to the pandemic), including improvements to our customer service centre and the installation of Smart ATMs across our branch network.
• Embedding a strong new brand identity across all Bank of Sydney channels.
• Achieving greater budget transparency, accuracy and improved management with the introduction of a new budgeting system.
• The streamlining of our compliance reporting and monitoring process and the introduction of an external audit partnership for our Internal Audit function.

Our people and our partners have shown incredible commitment and expertise to deliver these major projects, creating greater capability for our business and its future growth.

Our communities are at our heart.

We take great pride in our community support programs. This year, to celebrate our 20th anniversary, we also launched an annual $20,000 community grant. The Grant for Good provides help to projects, organisations and initiatives that promote social inclusion, health and wellbeing, sports and other fields that benefit our communities.

The winner of this year’s grant was Variety: The Children’s Charity. They’ll be using the funds to donate eight adaptive tricycles to two schools in regional Victoria, in communities where students are experiencing ongoing trauma and disengagement. The specially designed tricycles will enable students living with a disability to be included in social bike riding activities, giving a huge boost to their confidence and sense of freedom. We're really proud to be supporting this initiative which will have a very tangible direct impact on social inclusion for disadvantaged kids.

This year we also began an exciting partnership with the Sydney FC Men’s A-League team, as their Major Banking Partner for the 2022/2023 seasons. Like Sydney FC, we’re committed to diversity, inclusiveness and supporting our customers. We’ll be working together to ensure our communities are served to the best of our abilities. I’m thrilled that the season has now begun and I’m looking forward to a great couple of years - and some fantastic performances from the team!

Wishing you health, happiness and peace.

Hopefully the last few years have given us all an opportunity to simplify not just our business, but our lives, and to focus on what’s most important – human connection. Please stay safe and enjoy your time with family, friends and loved ones over the holiday period. I truly wish everyone the best of health, happiness and peace in 2022 and beyond.

 

Kind regards,
Miltos Michaelas
Chief Executive Officer