BOQ Annual Reporting 2022
Annual Report
BOQ's 2022 Annual Report includes an overview of BOQ’s purpose and values, strategy, operations, the Group's audited financial statements and other statutory disclosures.
Sustainability Report
BOQ's 2022 Sustainability Report outlines our performance against social, environmental and economic opportunities and challenges.
Corporate Governance Statement
BOQ's 2022 Corporate Governance Statement discloses how we have complied with the ASX Corporate Governance Council's Principles and Recommendations.
FY22 Investor Materials
BOQ's FY22 Investor Materials provide a high level overview of the Group's performance along with a detailed result analysis and a discussion on the outlook, which covers the macro environment and the Group's high level priorities.
Dear Fellow Shareholders
FY22 has been a challenging year with unique circumstances to navigate as we learnt to live with COVID-19, dealt with pressures from inflation, labour shortages and experienced rising interest rates for the first time in over 11 years. The year was also impacted by severe flooding and extreme weather events across the country. These economic, health and environmental factors have impacted the lives of many of our customers and people.
It is against this backdrop that our purpose,
Building Social Capital through Banking was developed. The importance of supporting each other and leveraging the strength of our social connections has never been more critical. The new purpose enables our people from across the legacy BOQ, Virgin Money Australia and ME brands to come together under a new common banner. The purpose is underpinned by new values to inspire and guide our people as we deliver positive long term sustainable outcomes for our customers, people, shareholders and the communities in which we operate.
Board priorities and strategy
Throughout the year we have made good progress against our strategy while supporting our customers through challenging times and remaining focused on sustainable profitable growth.
We are executing on our digital transformation and are seeing tangible benefits for customers and the business with strong growth in digital transaction accounts and deposits. In March this year we launched the BOQ brand transaction and savings products on the new platform, joining VMA and proving out the multi-brand capability of the platform. Work is well progressed on adding ME to the platform which we expect to deliver next year. This will see
all three retail brands available on the new digital banking platform, resulting in a superior customer experience and improved access to lower-cost funding.
We have high conviction in the delivery of the cloud based digital bank and are now halfway through this medium-term transformation plan. The program requires considerable investment with the uplift in efficiency, customer experience and returns largely back ended to when we switch off our complex
legacy systems. Whilst the value of this investment is not as yet reflected in our share price, we remain committed to staying the course in our ambition to build a highly efficient and scalable digital bank with an exceptional customer experience, low cost to income ratio and improved returns on equity. We are focused on growing our business in a quality way and strengthening our financial and operational resilience and risk controls and risk culture. There is more work to do on improving our risk controls and risk culture, which is being supported by our investment in moving off complex legacy systems and reducing reliance on manual controls.
The right leadership and talent is critical to our success and we understand the importance of building the skills needed for the future through the development and retention of a high quality and diverse team.
These elements are key to our future success, and we continually assess broader consumer trends and market shifts such as digitisation and decarbonisation, emerging opportunities and market consolidation when evolving our strategy.
Customers & communities
Customers are at the heart of our business and central to our decision making. We have continued to deliver superior customer experiences through the year, evidenced through our top 3 NPS ranking for the BOQ Retail brand and portfolio growth during the year. Our transformation gives us the opportunity to further enhance our value proposition for customers, to make their everyday and business banking a digital, seamless, and easy process, to facilitate Australians buying their first home or taking that next step in growing the family business.
We are focused on supporting our most vulnerable customers who might be facing hardship and understand the key role we play in the resilience of households and businesses through these uncertain economic times. Our business bankers have strong relationships with their customers and our Owner Managers have long term and deep relationships within their local communities.
During the year we have continued our community partnerships with Orange Sky Australia, Clontarf Foundation, Stars Foundation, National Breast Cancer Foundation and the Mother’s Day Classic Foundation. These organisations support vulnerable Australians, First Nations youth and breast cancer research and are aligned to our purpose. I am very proud of the role our people and BOQ plays in advancing the important work of these organisations.
Business performance & capital management
Notwithstanding the uncertainty of this year, I am pleased to report that BOQ has again delivered a solid financial performance with reported statutory profit of $426m. After tax cash earnings for the year was $508m which represented earnings per share of 78.4 cents.
BOQ is committed to prudent capital management to support resilience through the cycle, disciplined investment and growth targets, and acceptable dividends to our shareholders. Our end of year CET1 ratio was 9.57%. Given the current economic environment and the upcoming Basel III capital changes we will seek to retain CET1 above 9.5% with a reconsideration of the appropriate setting after we have finalised the Basel III re-weightings.
(1) The emissions reduction target is based off a 2020 baseline.
We have good business momentum with strong growth across all our brands. Our Retail brands and channels have delivered above system housing growth and our Business Bank has also outperformed in the SME market in line with our renewed focus on this area.
In balancing resilience with the investment required for our transformation and the capital allocation for future growth, the Board has determined a fully franked final dividend of 24 cents per share be paid, bringing the FY22 total ordinary dividend to 46 cents per share. This is slightly below our target payout ratio reflecting the important reinvestment in the business.
People & culture
Building social capital requires a commitment from all our people to create a culture that enables exceptional customer experiences, inclusion and diversity and improving outcomes for all our stakeholders. We ask our people to be accountable and speak up if they see something that isn’t right in order to build a strong risk culture where all our people see risk as part of their role.
Our values guide the way we do business, to make a positive difference to the lives of our customers and our communities. The strong leadership team we have in place will enable us to continue executing on our strategy and transform BOQ to a simpler, digital and sustainable bank. Pleasingly, we have again seen an uplift in employee engagement in FY22 which now stands at 67%. We recognise there is more to do but are encouraged by our steady progress since 2019.
In FY21 Performance Shares replaced short term incentives (delivered via a combination of cash and restricted shares) for the CEO and senior leadership team to better align with shareholder outcomes. Recognising the underperformance of BOQ’s share price in FY22 and the difficult year for many of our customers and communities, balanced against the performance ratings in our group scorecard, the Board supported the recommendation from the Managing Director and CEO to reduce his performance share conversion by 25% and by 10% for those allocated to the senior executive team.
Building a sustainable business
The Board recognises the importance of environmental and social matters to our stakeholders and takes an active role in shaping BOQ’s response. The devastation experienced by our communities as a result of the floods and weather events showcased the resilience of our customers and people, but it also strengthened our resolve to support Australians in the transition to a low carbon future in order to address the impacts of climate change.
BOQ is a certified carbon neutral organisation, ensuring that our operational footprint is offset while we work to reduce our emissions. We have committed to sourcing 100% of our energy needs from renewable sources by 2025 and have made good progress with 54% of our needs coming from renewable sources in FY22. We are committed to ceasing the financing of assets directly involved in the extraction of fossil fuels and are committed to a 90% reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030(1) along with a 40% reduction in our supply chain scope 3 emissions. Sustainability is integral to our new purpose and is critical to our future success.
Board composition
Dr Jennifer Fagg joined the Board on 13 October 2021, bringing more than 25 years’ executive experience in leading financial services institutions in Australia and abroad, strong credentials in risk management and a PHD in Risk culture. Her appointment completes the board refresh and I am confident we have the right skills, capabilities and diversity of thought in place which are crucial to BOQ’s continued transformation.
The Board understands its critical role in oversight, setting the tone for the business and its responsibilities to our shareholders, our people and our customers.
Looking ahead
Our progress in delivering a fully cloud based end-to-end banking platform across the group is well underway. We look forward to continuing this progress over the coming year, with a clear purpose supported by meaningful values to continue to deliver strong results.
I would like to acknowledge our Managing Director & CEO, George Frazis, the Executive Committee and all our BOQ employees for their continued commitment to delighting our customers, living our values and creating long term value for our customers and shareholders. Through their hard work, we will continue to execute on our strategy and build social capital through banking.
On behalf of the Board, thank you to our customers and shareholders for your support through what has been a challenging year.
Patrick Allaway
Chairman