The custody business, which is 50 years old, had retained many accounts that were almost inactive. Since the review, about 50 clients have been cut. This “allowed account managers to focus on value-adding clients”, McWilliams said. “We had a huge number of legacy clients that weren’t active, and [who] we had minimal communications with,” Allardice added. Some attention was also paid to the custodian’s technology systems.

Reconciliation of trades was reformed so that it would be carried out across the business, rather than within separate departments, and a new system for its securities lending business was installed and trialled. The bank is ranked sixth in the December 2008 Australian Custodial Services Association tables with $64.3 billion in Australian assets under custody, and third in sub-custody assets with $51.5 billion. Its biggest client is ING, ANZ’s retail investment joint venture partner, for which it services $8.7 billion in assets under custody.