Sustainability Of Westpac Bank In Australia: Strategies And Policies

Sustainability of the bank

Discuss about the Sustainability Of The Westpac Bank in Australia.

Westpac is one of the leading banks in Australia that has gained an immense popularity with an increasing number of customers. Here the focus will be on the sustainability of Westpac bank in order to achieve a good place in the list of the most sustainable organizations in the world (Westpac.com.au 2017). The ways in which the bank has maintained its sustainability and the policies they have taken to present themselves as one of the leading organizations in global sustainability has a lot to do with the customer loyalty of the bank. This paper aims to provide a brief outlook about the strategies the bank has taken to improve its services and the ways it has been tryingto improve its brand reputation. Both the internal and external stakeholders have been a part of this process of maintaining their sustainability. The different angles and views have to be analyzed in this paper.

Westpac bank has been a leading organization has been providing a quality service for years as the employees are completely dedicated to their responsibilities. They have a lot of social responsibilities that they maintain with appropriateness (Westpac.com.au 2017).

The Westpac Bank has believed in some important ideals. They believe that they can be able to prosper in this challenging business environment only if the community they are operating in, prospers (Westpac.com.au 2017).  Their organizational culture has supported the ideal to support the community in a great extent over the years (Banks et al. 2013). This is their philosophy and they have faith in it. They contribute to a lot many a social cause and many social institutions. Like Westpac Foundation, St. George Foundation, BankSA Foundation, Bank of Melbourne Neighborhood Plan and others. They have contributed to natural disaster recovery trusts as well. They provide microfinance opportunities for their customers as well. They have built very strong community partnerships that help them to grow sustainable future for themselves (Banks et al. 2013).

They have been trying to present themselves in a simpler way for the customers and they are trying their best so that the customers can improve in their transaction process (Weinstein and Roy 2012). They have developed some products and services that have yielded to support their customers in a large way. They have offered Disaster Relief Packages to the customers to support them at the time of a critical financial crisis (Westpac.com.au 2017). They provide the microfinance opportunities to their customers that help and encourage the new business owners waiting for their start up. They have opened a special bank account only for the women business enthusiasts in the country.

Community support

One of the most important services that they provide is the support to their internal and external stakeholders (Wong et al. 2012). The support they provide to their customers, suppliers, investors and other bodies is very important They have over a thousands of suppliers who provide them with lot of important resources worth $5 billion annually, they are quite dedicated to return the favor to them (Westpac.com.au 2017). The supply chain has a critical influence in improving their services and bringing sustainability to their operations. This positive force and opportunities will help to thrive for positive social and environmental change (Kasperson et al. 2012). They have maintained some long term relationships so that they can focus on socially responsible and sustainable business practices all over. The important thing that has been identified in this aspect that their moral, social and environmental sustainability has depended a lot on the activities of themselves that are conjugated with their supplier as well. Their ethical responsibilities have driven them to maintain a strong relationship as well.

They have focused on their investors as well. They have opted for some strategies that will guide them to combat against the risk situations by a strong relationship as well. They have maintained some policies, frameworks and perspectives that could guide them to avoid the risk situations. The issues and opportunities that are present in front of them should be dealt with firmness and positivity (Bushee and Miller 2012). Their governance framework is very supportive that works in positive them to maintain their social responsibilities. They maintain the strategy that they keep regular and transparent reporting so that their reporters are able to compare their performance on annual basis.

However, their strategies and policies to maintain the sustainability in their organizations have not catered to satisfying the needs and expectations from their stakeholders like the internal management, employees, investors, NGOs and the corporate peers who work as key people behind their success in the global sphere (Thomas and Lamm 2012). In the following segment, the awards and acknowledgements that the bank has received can be underlined to have a better look at this scenario.

• The predecessor of Westpac, Bank of NSW has launched the very first disaster relief fund in Australia in 1817 (Luis, Dolinskaya and Smilowitz 2012).
• They are one of the nine founding members of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEPFI) in 1991 (Westpac.com.au 2017).
• They are the first bank in Australia to launch an environmental policy in 1992.
• They are the first Australian bank and one of the very first organizations who have established a formal community volunteering scheme in 1997.
• They first awarded the Federal Government ‘Employer of Choice for Women’ in 1996 (Westpac.com.au 2017).
• They had enhanced the family-friendly policies, including the doubling of paid parental leave in 2005.
• They had endorsed the United Nations Principles for the Responsible Investment.

Their sustainability report for the year 2016 has shown that the growth rate of their sustainability has not been so progressive as in the previous years. However, they have been named as the most sustainable bank in the world despite some challenges, global issues and overcoming them at last. Their Reconciliation Action Plan has thrived for the indigenous Australians and helps them to progress in their economic development. They have participated in a lot of global forums and activities that have helped them to gain new experiences about the economic development of the people (Leigh and Blakely 2016). They have identified that the governments, social enterprises and business authorities should be working together a lot to achieve the goal of economic development and cater to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal. They have really responded well to the challenging issues over the years and this has yielded them the global leading position. They are concentrating on the Sustainable Strategy invented by them that would be ending in the year 2017 (Westpac.com.au 2017).

Customer support

Westpac Bank has launched many policies and frameworks to motivate the performance of the sustainability in the bank. There have been noticed many issues to cater to the needs and requirements of the customers and the other stakeholders.

• They have invested in the extra dedicated resources to counter the new and emerging threats.
• They have to enhance the resiliency of the security systems.
• The availability of the customers’ data has to be made safe as they have lost many of their customers because of being victims of cybercrime.
• The global research house has ranked the Westpac’s mobile banking platform Westpac.Live.
• They have been able to introduce 188 new features in their various digital banking platforms.
• They have also invested their money in the innovative product design (Malarkey 2014).
• They have launched a new facility of services in the St. George.
• They have invested an amount of $278 million to strengthen and enhance the processes that already exist (Westpac.com.au, 2017).
• They have begun a new Group-wide Product and Service Lifecycle Policy because they want to strengthen the sustainability criteria and fairness to customers (Hepperle et al. 2012).
• They have participated in the industry initiatives very actively that has helped them to get a new place in the list of sustainable organizations. They have done it as their responsibility to ABA 6 Point Plan.
• They have also set up some Product Governance Committees to review the design and seek the opinions of their customers.
• The Westpac branch teller incentives have been reviewed so as to focus on the customer based strategies.
• They have delivered a very good performance with a 14% cash equity return that has supported them for a good business growth (Westpac.com.au 2017).
• They have assessed climate based reports as well because it is very important to review the climatic conditions in which they are operating.
• They have continuously applied the Group’s Sustainability Risk Management Framework so that the sustainability risks could be identified, assessed and managed properly.

These are the few ways the organization has attempted to recover the fallouts that have taken place in the last year to improve the conditions to prevent their loss of customers. The reports in the earlier years have to be brought back into practice to bring back the sustainability in the organization.

Conclusion

The paper can be concluded by saying that Westpac has been trying to bring back their old glory because they have suffered some setbacks in the recent years. Their sustainability efforts have also not been up to the mark that had been the benchmark in the industry quite a few years ago. However, they have managed to keep their position in the first place in the sustainability reports by the global organizations. They have planned to gain more sustainability into their organizations by applying more methods and strategies.

References

Banks, S., Butcher, H.L., Orton, A. and Robertson, J. eds., 2013. Managing community practice: Principles, policies and programmes. Policy Press.

Bushee, B.J. and Miller, G.S., 2012. Investor relations, firm visibility, and investor following. The Accounting Review, 87(3), pp.867-897.

Hepperle, C., Orawsk, R., Nolte, B.D., Mörtl, M. and Lindemann, U., 2012, October. An integrated lifecycle model of product-service-systems. In Proceedings of the 2nd CIRP IPS2 Conference 2010; 14-15 April; Linköping; Sweden (No. 077, pp. 159-166). Linköping University Electronic Press.

Kasperson, J.X., Kasperson, R.E., Turner, B.L., Hsieh, W. and Schiller, A., 2012. Vulnerability to global environmental change. In The Social Contours of Risk: Volume II: Risk Analysis, Corporations and the Globalization of Risk. Taylor and Francis.

Leigh, N.G. and Blakely, E.J., 2016. Planning local economic development: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.

Luis, E., Dolinskaya, I.S. and Smilowitz, K.R., 2012. Disaster relief routing: Integrating research and practice. Socio-economic planning sciences, 46(1), pp.88-97.

Malarkey, A., 2014. Business model innovation: Game-changing the future. Government News, 34(4), p.563.

Thomas, T.E. and Lamm, E., 2012. Legitimacy and organizational sustainability. Journal of business ethics, 110(2), pp.191-203.

Weinstein, A. and Roy, K., Sequent Software Inc., 2012. System and method for increasing security in internet transactions. U.S. Patent Application 13/669,006.

Westpac.com.au. (2017). Westpac - Personal, Business and Corporate Banking. [online] Available at: https://www.westpac.com.au/ [Accessed 3 Sep. 2017].

Westpac.com.au. (2017). Westpac Annual report. [online] Available at: https://www.westpac.com.au/content/dam/public/wbc/documents/pdf/aw/ic/2016_Westpac_Annual_Report [Accessed 3 Sep. 2017].

Wong, C.W., Lai, K.H., Cheng, T.C.E. and Lun, Y.V., 2012. The roles of stakeholder support and procedure-oriented management on asset recovery. International journal of production economics, 135(2), pp.584-594.