Comparative Analysis Of Economic Performance Of Westpac Corporation Bank Of Australia And Bank Of Montreal Of Canada

Literature Review

Describe about the Accounting Project for The Banking Organization.

The banking organization plays a very important role in economic development and financial system of any nation. Therefore, the estimation of its effectiveness is very crucial. This research proposal presents the comparative analysis of Australian and Canadian bank organization’s economic performance. Throughout the past 2 decades, significant empirical and theoretical attention is being given on financial and economic performance and development. Banking organization has crucial impact on the urbanization and industrialization process of any country. Banking organization manipulates the economic performance through three important factors, which are: (1) increase rate in private savings (2) the improvement and effectiveness on the intermediary performance of finance (3) the development of social capital productivity. Generally, productivity growth is highly dependent on financial performance. Hence, if smooth performance of financial system is disturbed by financial crisis, it will have considerable negative effect on the banking organizations as well as economic performance of any country (Joshi et al. 2013).

Australian banking organization consists of various banks operated under the Banking Act, 1959. Banking system in Australia is competitive, liquid and well-developed. At present, there are four major banks who are dominating the banking organization in Australia. They are: National Australia Bank, Commonwealth bank of Australia, Westpac banking Corporation and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. On the other hand, banking organization in Canada started through the establishment of Bank of Montreal in the year 1817.  In day to day business, the banking organization in Canada, are divided into two major categories, such as: (1) five large national banks (2) smaller banks in second tier. Five major banks in Canada are: Toronto Dominion Bank, Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Some remarkable second tier banks are: Canadian Western Bank, Laurentine Bank, ATB Financial, HSBC Bank of Canada, Desjardins Group and Tangerine Bank (Grigoroudis, Tsitsiridi and Zopounidis 2013).

Westpac Banking Corporation (Australia):

Background:

Westpac is Australia’s first bank. Westpac was founded in 1817 and known as Bank of New South Wales under the merger offered by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. It converted its name to Westpac Banking Corporation in October 1982 after the acquirement of Commercial Bank of Australia. They started their business with Joseph Hyde, who was their first employee. He used to receive an annual remuneration of 25 pounds along with weekly ration from King’s store. In the year 1821, they faced huge loss as the chief cashier of New South Wales absconded with half of their subscribed capital, out of which not a single penny was recoverable. The bank began their major expansion through the gold fever in 1851 when they found a prospect to set up buying agents for gold with regard to the requirement of merchants and miners. They had grown to 37 branches from a single branch in Sydney, by the year 1861. At present, Westpac has 5 divisions for serving near about 13 million customers. Their operating structure and business are lined up with the need of their prime customers. (Strong, Cater-Steel and Lane 2014). Five key segments of Westpac are:

Problem Statement

Business bank: They are liable for customer service and sales of their agribusiness and commercial customer and small to medium enterprises. This division also helps the expertise in equipment and asset finance.

Consumer bank: They are liable for service and sales of their Australian customer under Westpac.

BT Financial Group of Australia: They manage the Australian insurance and wealth business. They are liable for management of the fund, distribution and manufacturing of investment, financial planning, private banking, broking and margin lending.

Institutional bank of Westpac: They provides a wide range of financial deals to corporate, commercial, government and institutional customers, connected to New Zealand and Australia (Cummings and Durrani 2016).

Westpac of New Zealand: They are accountable for service and sales of insurance, wealth, and banking products for business and institutional consumers around New Zealand.

Other divisions of business of the group involves: Group Technology, Business and Customer Services, Core support and Treasury department (Islam, Jain and Thomson 2016).

Bank of Montreal (Canada):

Background:

Bank of Montreal was founded in the year 1817 as a wide financial service provider in North America. They provides wide range services and products like investment banking, wealth management, retail banking to more than 12 million consumers. Bank of Montreal carry on their business through the operating groups like: Capital market of BMO, Wealth Management and Commercial and Personal banking. They serve the customers of Canada through the Bank of Montreal, Nesbitt Burns of BMO and Capital Markets of BMO. They help their clients to make money through offering the widest variety of financial services by a single point contact. Their experts from financial service segment always offer services to their customer around the whole enterprise, in case they need any kind of service (Allahrakha, Glasserman and Young 2015).

Primary services provided by the Bank of Montreal are:

Start plan for business: Under this plan, clients are offered to get banking plan for business with low-fee and no minimum monthly balance obligation.

Builder 1 Plan for Business: Under this plan, customers are provided with a banking plan of business for a charge of $20 per month and with no minimum balance requirement for up to 35 transactions per month.

Builder 2 Plan for Business: As per this plan, clients get banking plan for business for a monthly charge of $45, up to 70 dealings per month and with advanced electronic system for banking solutions (van Knippenberg 2016).

Research Question

Problem Statement:

The main problem statement of this research proposal is to analyze the economic performance of Westpac Corporation Bank of Australia and Bank of Montreal from Canada and the types of services offered by these banks to their clients (Thomas, Silverman and Nelson 2015).

Main questions of this research proposal are:

1. What are the contributions of Westpac Banking Corporation in Australia?
2. What are the contributions of Bank of Montreal in Canada?
3. How these banks are contributing to the nation’s economic development?
4. How these banks are providing services to their customers?
   

Research design and Objectives:

This research proposal is proposed to analyze the contribution of Westpac Corporation Bank and Bank of Montreal towards the economic development of Australia and Canada. The main objective of this research proposal is to find out how these banks are providing services to their client and the range of services provided to them (Creswell 2013).

Research Hypothesis:

The hypothesis of this research proposal is:

H0: Economic performance of Westpac Corporation Bank of Australia is better

H1: Economic performance of Bank of Montreal of Canada is better.

The plan for research includes the way in which the research is required to be completed. This research proposal is about the comparative analysis of the economic performance of Westpac Corporation Bank of Australia and bank of Montreal of Canada. This research proposal involves Quantitative Secondary research. The quantitative secondary research involves collection of data from the official websites of Westpac Corporation Bank of Australia and Bank of Montreal of Canada. Analysis of data shall be based on the existing information available in their official website (Pickard 2012).

Research Philosophy:

There are three types of research philosophy. The first type of philosophy is known as realism philosophy. Human feelings and emotions are mainly taken into account in realism philosophy. The conclusions are drawn by taking into consideration the feelings and emotions. Positivism is the second type of research philosophy. In this case, the human feelings and emotions are not at all considered. The conclusions are drawn from collected information and figures. The third type of research philosophy, that is, interpretive research philosophy, considers both the human emotions and feelings along with collected data and figures. For example, when a research is carried out, the part where an individual supports a particular cause or does not fall in the section of data collection, then a particular attitude of the people regarding the social cause falls under realism research philosophy.              

The chosen research philosophy for this research work is positivism research philosophy. The research will be carried out based on the collected data. The research is mainly based on secondary data. The emotions and feelings are not taken into account in this kind of research work (Robson and McCartan 2016).

Research Design and Objectives

The Gantt Chart for this research proposal is given below:

Figure: Gnatt Chart for the research proposal

(Source: Created by Author)

Research process is the way through which research is to be carried out. In the first week of the research, the research problem is required to be identified and the problem report of the research will be arranged. In week 6, literature review shall be completed. In week 8, collection and analysis of data shall be completed. Conclusion and final presentation shall be completed by week 13 and final business thesis is due for week 14 (O'Leary 2013).

Secondary data collection for quantitative data will include data from the official website of Westpac Corporation Bank of Australia and Bank of Montreal of Canada. There are number of clients who use the services of these banks. The data can also be collected from the services provided by the bank to their clients (McMillan and Schumacher 2014).

The research strategy states the ways by which the research is being carried out. The research strategies can be of four different types – qualitative research design, quantitative research design, logical theoretical research, participatory research and others. The qualitative research design refers to using secondary research. In the case of quantitative design, the primary data is being used. The primary data can be collected by the help of questionnaire. The logical research refers to drawing consequences from initial assumptions (Hair 2015).

The participatory research refers to the research approaches used in social systems for studying. The research strategies used for this research work is Quantitative Secondary approach. The data is being collected regarding the economic performance of Westpac Corporation Bank of Australia and Bank of Montreal of Canada from the official website of these banks (Silverman 2013).

The time horizons refer to the time points from where the data is being calculated. The data can be collected over a single point of time or repeatedly over different points of time. When the data is being collected over a single point of time, then the design is referred to as cross sectional design. When the data of different variables are repeatedly collected in different points of time, then the design is known as longitudinal study design. The cross sectional study design is used for the purpose of this research. The study involves collection of data regarding the economic performance and service to clients by these banks. It also states the various types of services provided by the banks to their clients (Bell 2014).

The research proposal must give an apparent idea about the Economic performance of Westpac Corporation Bank, Australia and Bank of Montreal, Canada. The research proposal also gives a clear idea regarding the collection and analysis of dataset. The possible conclusions of the analysis shall also be stated in the proposal. The research proposal will help to analyse the economic performance of banks in Australia and Canada.

References:  

Allahrakha, M., Glasserman, P. and Young, H.P., 2015. Systemic importance indicators for 33 US bank holding companies: an overview of recent data. OFR Brief, (15-01).

Bell, J., 2014. Doing Your Research Project: A guide for first-time researchers. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

Creswell, J.W., 2013. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.

Cummings, J.R. and Durrani, K.J., 2016. Effect of the Basel Accord capital requirements on the loan-loss provisioning practices of Australian banks. Journal of Banking & Finance, 67, pp.23-36.

Grigoroudis, E., Tsitsiridi, E. and Zopounidis, C., 2013. Linking customer satisfaction, employee appraisal, and business performance: an evaluation methodology in the banking sector. Annals of Operations Research, 205(1), pp.5-27.

Hair, J.F., 2015. Essentials of business research methods. ME Sharpe.

Islam, M.A., Jain, A. and Thomson, D., 2016. Does the global reporting initiative influence sustainability disclosures in Asia-Pacific banks?. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, pp.1-16.

Joshi, M., Cahill, D., Sidhu, J. and Kansal, M., 2013. Intellectual capital and financial performance: an evaluation of the Australian financial sector. Journal of intellectual capital, 14(2), pp.264-285.

McMillan, J.H. and Schumacher, S., 2014. Research in education: Evidence-based inquiry. Pearson Higher Ed.

O'Leary, Z., 2013. The essential guide to doing your research project. Sage.

Pickard, A., 2012. Research methods in information. Facet publishing.

Robson, C. and McCartan, K., 2016. Real world research. John Wiley & Sons.

Silverman, D., 2013. Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook. SAGE Publications Limited.

Strong, B., Cater-Steel, A. and Lane, M., 2014. Prudential risk management of IT sourcing strategies: a case study of an Australian bank.

Thomas, J.R., Silverman, S. and Nelson, J., 2015. Research Methods in Physical Activity, 7E. Human kinetics.

van Knippenberg, D., 2016. Making Sense of Who We Are. The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Identity, p.335.