ANZ offers telepresence to Australia's richest

ANZ Private Wealth has purchased and installed six Cisco telepresence units, which will be used to launch a video conferencing meeting service for the bank’s wealthiest customers.

The ‘ANZ Wealth Presence’ service connects high net worth individuals to their ANZ Private and ANZ Trustee wealth managers, lawyers and other staff via a high definition video conferencing service.

Telepresence units have been deployed in Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth following a four-month trial. Two more sites are under consideration, including Darwin.

ANZ Wealth chief operating officer Angus Gilfillan told the Cisco Live event in Melbourne that the organisation aims to offer a premium client experience that would appeal to “the 100 wealthiest families, the CEOs of corporates, those customers that are time poor that expect the highest standards.”

That premium experience needs to be “integrated”, Gilfillan said. “We have an ambition to ask for information once, share it across our specialists, and not to waste the customers’ time.”

That presents a challenge when lawyers and wealth managers that specialise in any given field are distributed around the country, and not necessarily aligned with where high net worth individuals choose to spend their time.

“Wealth Presence enables us to have high quality conversations with our clients at any time across the country or internationally,” he said.

Gilfillan said user acceptance has been positive.

“We were concerned about how clients would react,” he said “Many have had past attempts with video conferencing where the experience wasn’t that good. I’m happy to report we’ve had fantastic acceptance from clients.

"A customer might be speaking to an estate lawyer in one state and dial in a financial planner for another to have a very high value, high involvement discussion.”

Gilfillan said that as of March, the bank is running 15 client meetings a week, a number that is rapidly growing.

He told iTnews that security of the conversations had not reared its head as a major concern among the customers. “Traditionally we would have had these conference calls across phone lines – if anything they find it more secure now because they can see who they are talking to.”

He added that the telepresence sessions are conducted behind the ANZ’s enterprise firewall.

Training

The telepresence units have created training complexities and opportunities for ANZ Private Wealth.

Initially, the bank had to train 200 people across the country “about how to conduct meetings in a very different way. “

Change management was important to the project, he said. But the system has also created training opportunities.

“One benefit we didn’t expect was how useful telepresence is for the training and development of front line staff,” he said.

“Offering an integrated experience means our front line staff need to be aware of what our whole proposition can deliver.”