ANZ’s Vision And Strategy For Financial Superiority

ANZ’s Mission and Vision for Financial Superiority

Question:

Discuss about the Management Accounting for New Zealand Banking Group. 

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) realizes that the best-performing companies combine their vision and mission with their strategies so that they can outperform their competitors. The best mission and vision for such company would be to become a superior class financial institution that can provide superior returns to all its stakeholders. For such purpose, it can value its people by motivating, recognizing, and retaining them efficiently. It can also focus towards change by starting small and thinking big so that outperforming competitors becomes simpler. Furthermore, the company can utilize its skills and experience to ensure that all its resources are effectively used. This vision statement can easily assist the company to address every requirement of its stakeholders. Besides, the key performance indicators like cost to income ratio, deposits, quality of loan book, etc must be analysed to ensure that the mission and vision statement is adequate and effective. In relation to strategy, ANZ must focus its strategy around four primary blocks of financial performance that are sustainability, economic transformation, asset-light strategy, and cost leadership (ANZ, 2016). Moreover, the company has a considerable market share and a diversified product portfolio that assists it to thrive in such complicated environment. Therefore, if a harvest strategy is adopted by the company to enhance its performance, then it would be more suitable for it to acquire all its goals and objectives. The reason behind this can also be attributed to the fact that a build strategy lacks certainty and predictability than a harvest strategy. Besides, since it is well known that ANZ has a diversified portfolio of products and an enhanced share of market, adoption of a harvest strategy will be more beneficial for such company, as it can easily assist it to enhance its profitability and flows of cash. Nonetheless, harvest strategy will be more suitable for an organization like ANZ because a build strategy cannot allow it to flourish in the market and outperform its competitors.

In order to ascertain enhanced details about the cost, ANZ Ltd utilizes an activity-based cost system that is not required for external financial reporting. In such scenario, the company is using both manufacturing and non-manufacturing costs in place of job-order or process costing. Furthermore, ANZ is engaged in diversification of its product portfolio and catering to a wide range of stakeholders through banking services. In relation to this, the bank incurs cost for arranging loan amounts, setting up basic infrastructure, and post sales processes of customer services.

ANZ’s Strategy for Financial Performance

Activity-based costing results in an appropriate way of service or product costing, thereby resulting in a better pricing decision. The overhead understanding gets maximized along with the cost drivers, thereby making these costly and non-value affairs to be clearer in nature. This grants the managers to lessen them based on the requirements and such costing system leads to an efficient challenge when it comes to processes of operating costs so that overheads can be terminated (Vanderbeck, 2013). This also assists in product enhancement and profitability assessment of company manifolds. Besides, this also assists in performance management and regular projections of improvement. The system of activity-based costing results in an indirect cost allocation that are based on product cost drivers or factors that result in the generation of cost  (Venanci, 2012). Nevertheless, the process of ABC can be used to track non-valued activities of a company, thereby resulting in an efficient allocation of resources. Besides, the system of ABC in the company (ANZ) can also result in addition of value and continuous improvements in the business affairs of the company. Further, the best move for the company will be to pursue a costing system that can assist in offering better scope to it. Moreover, the company can easily settle its activities with such system as it can effectively use its resources for addressing the grievances of all its stakeholders (Vanderbeck, 2013). Just-in-time, moving towards JIT system can be a better move for the company because it can facilitate in an enhanced association with the size of batches so that it can deliver properly.

Even though financial measures have been regarded as more appropriate by many researchers, yet in the current scenario, organizations like ANZ use non-financial measures like a balanced scorecard measure to measure their performance. The company also uses an integrated performance management approach to measure its performance (ANZ, 2016). With the help of such approach, ANZ gains an ability to integrate its performance measures both horizontally and vertically so that it is ensured that the goals and objectives are adequately met. It can also be observed from the annual report of ANZ that it has utilized non-GAAP measures so that it can assess its performance level. Such reliance upon non-financial measures is highly visible in most of the companies operating in New Zealand. Furthermore, the second approach utilized by the company is balanced scorecard measure that allows it to measure its performance by interconnecting its goals and objectives with its overall strategies and vision (ANZ, 2016). This can altogether assist in maximization of goodwill and quality of corporate reporting.

Activity-Based Costing at ANZ

The best possible performance measure in the case of ANZ Ltd will be balanced scorecard measure because such approach takes into consideration both financial and non-financial scenarios so that better outcomes can be derived. Furthermore, such measure is more beneficial than other measures because it can assist in providing significant details of the company’s performance beyond that obtained from market-determined strategies (Parrino et. al, 2012). Therefore, the key performance indicators like the quality of loan book, fees, deposits, etc can be considered by the company’s management to ascertain whether certain requirements related to these indicators have been effectively fulfilled or not. Besides, this can allow the company to make proper strategies so that it can address any prevalent issues and that can allow it to thrive in such competitive market, thereby serving as a major tool in enhancing the quality of corporate reporting and reputation as well (Carmichael & Graham, 2012). Hence, a balanced scorecard will be more suitable for ANZ since it facilitates in a positive and better performance outcome.

A balanced scorecard strategy is very useful since it facilitates in enhanced measurement of performance within companies. Besides, unlike traditional measures, this strategy does not accommodate only financial measures to evaluate an organization’s performance (Petty et. al, 2012). Instead, it comprises of both financial and non-financial measures so that enhanced material information can be offered to the managers regarding the performance of the company based on several performance indicators (ANZ, 2016). This can altogether assist in forecasting the future performance of an organization that cannot be done by other traditional measures. Nonetheless, such measure suggests that the capability of a company to generate value in future is subject to four major concerns like customer, growth, internal learning, and financial aspects.

Perspective	Aim
Growth	This assists an organization to ascertain how to enhance its innovative processes.
Financial	This is subjected towards how shareholders of a company are viewed upon.
Internal learning	This perspective allows an organization to maximize the efficiency of its internal affairs.
Customer	This perspective assists in determining the requirements of customers.

Internal perspective plays a key role in dealing with internal control systems so that abnormal losses can be minimized, thereby assisting in enhancement of organizational performance. Customer aspect in a balanced scorecard assists in focusing upon the fact that every requirement of customers must be duly considered so that business solidity can be gained by the company, thereby generating higher chances of outperforming other rivals in the industry (Peirson et. al, 2015). Financial perspective present in the scorecard allows an organization to control its costs and enhance its revenues respectively. In simple words, it can be said that financial aspect in the scorecard allows a company to attain maximum profitability and overall objectives too. Lastly, the innovation or growth aspect allows a company to upgrade its present technologies for the benefit of the entire community so that they get what they deserve without compromising the resources of stakeholders (Merchant, 2012). These aspects can be incorporated into the balanced scorecard of ANZ so that it retains its high market share and diversified product portfolio.

Performance Measurement at ANZ

Competitor analysis is an in-depth analysis and investigation of the competition of a company so that the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors in the industry can be effectively evaluated. Furthermore, this allows a company implement and choose efficient strategies that can play a key role in enhancing its competitive advantage (Choi & Meek, 2011). Besides, such measure allows a company to gain both offensive and strategic context so that it can easily identify its opportunities and threats. In relation to ANZ Ltd, its major competitors are Commonwealth Bank and Westpac bank.

Both these companies offer immense competition to ANZ in the banking field. Further, essential success factors like employees’ performance, aggressive marketing, resource prevalence, etc are helpful in conducting competitive analysis in such field. After assessing the competitors of ANZ Ltd, it can be stated that the company has a competitive advantage in product portfolio, market share, asset finance, financial position, etc that allows it to remain firm in the market. Moreover, if enhancements in such aspects are not implemented, the company may lose advantage over its competitors (Porter & Norton, 2014). There are also aspects that maximizes the threats of ANZ in the banking field. For instance, the company has limited international exposure that prevents it to maximize its market share. If such weakness is not being considered by the company, it may fail to maintain a competitive advantage over its competitors, thereby failing to survive as well (ANZ, 2016). Furthermore, this can also result in the enhancement of the company’s costs, thereby resulting into a decline in its revenues. In addition, because of deteriorating economic situations in New Zealand and Australia, the company must take corrective actions so that it can easily remain firm in the market.

If ANZ takes due steps, it can easily remain competitive in the market without being outperformed by its competitors like Westpac and Commonwealth. However, to achieve such opportunity, it must take steps to enhance its strengths and lessen its weaknesses.

References

ANZ 2016, ANZ annual report and accounts 2016, viewed 22 October 2017 https://www.nzx.com/companies/ANZ/announcements/292244

Carmichael, D.R. & Graham, L 2012,  Accountants Handbook, Financial Accounting and General Topics, John Wiley & Sons.

Choi, R.D & Meek, G.K 2011,  International accounting,  Pearson

Merchant, K. A 2012, ‘Making Management Accounting Research More Useful’, Pacific Accounting  Review, vol. 24, no.3, pp. 1-34.

Parrino, R., Kidwell, D. & Bates, T 2012, Fundamentals of corporate finance, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley

Peirson, G, Brown, R., Easton, S,   Howard, P & Pinder, S 2015, Business Finance, 12th ed., North Ryde: McGraw-Hill Australia.

Petty, J. W,  Titman, S., Keown, A. J., Martin, J. D., Burrow, M & Nguyen, H., 2012, Financial Management: Principles and Applications, 6th ed., Australia: Pearson Education Australia.

Porter, G & Norton, C 2014, Financial Accounting: The Impact on Decision Maker, Texas: Cengage Learning

Vanderbeck, E J 2013, Principles of Cost Accounting, Oxford university press

Venanci, D 2012, Financial Performance Measures and Value Creation,  New York: Springer.