Q2 2025 Financial Services Insights:
- April 2025 saw 5 Board and Executive Appointments in the Financial Services sector.
- May 2025 saw 4 Board and Executive Appointments in the Financial Services sector.
- June 2025 saw 13 Board and Executive Appointments in the Financial Services sector.
WHO IS FOLLOWING THE MONEY?
Over the past twelve months there have been big moves in the markets, and also at the Big 4 Banks. We have seen two new CEOs, movements between banks, plus key appointments at the Group Executive level in the AI space.
Worth noting, CEO appointments in the past usually came from the retail bank, which is logical given the relative size of the retail revenues, with constant growth and consistent margin generated by the mortgage book. However, as market growth has slowed and the front book has competed heavily on price to shift market share, profitability has shrunk.
Attention has shifted to Business Bank market share, with NAB the market share leader fighting hard to retain and grow share and smaller banks such as Judo growing rapidly. It is perhaps unsurprising that the most recent three appointments, Andrew Irvine and Anthony Miller both came from the Business Bank, with ANZ’s Nuno Matos showing experience across all business units at HSBC and Santander.
Across other Financial Institutions we also see the continuation of the long-term trend of real money flowing into Superannuation, with continued consolidation and growth of Superfunds, who are shifting allocations to offshore and private assets. Some funds are insourcing Investments expertise and extending their footprint internationally. Simultaneously, International Firms are growing Australian based teams to service both domestic and international investors who are seeking to gain exposure to Australia.
BIG MOVES IN THE BIG 4:
1. NAB saw Andrew Irvine take over as CEO in April 2024, freeing up space for an internal reshuffle of Executives, with Ana Marinkovic and Catheryn Carver moving up to the GE level to run the Personal and Corporate and Institutional Banks.
More recently Andrew bought Andrew Auerbach from Bank of Montreal to run the Business Bank, amidst another internal reshuffle to replace various departing executives. Andrew started in June 2025 and will be working hard to defend NABs market leading position in the SME space
NAB also announced a new GE role in Digital, Data and AI, with Peter Steel moving over from Lloyds in the UK in Jan 2026.
2. Westpac saw Anthony Miller taking over as CEO in December 2024 and gradually building out his team over the past six months. Anthony has gone back to long standing Goldman’s colleagues, retaining Nell Hutton in the Institutional Bank, bringing across Paul Fowler to run the Business Bank and Nathan Goonan as CFO.
Westpac has also found a new CPO with FI experience from Bupa – Kate Dee, and appointed their own Chief Data, Digital and AI officer, reporting directly to Anthony. Andrew McMullan is moving across from CBA and starting in Sep 2025.
3. ANZ Nuno Matos joined May 2025 and may take some time to become acclimated to the domestic markets, he has yet to make new appointments, with several key leaders in his team announcing their decisions to leave the organization.
4. While CBA hasn’t changed CEO, October 2024 saw a retirement of the CRO, with Matt seeming to take the opportunity to add externally and reshuffle his team, potentially to provide GE’s with the experience to move up to CEO when the time comes. Emma Bunnell joined the group as COO from HSBC. With the current COO Sinead Taylor moving across to Institutional and Andrew Hinchliff moving across to Risk.
EARLY PLANS IN AI?
GE roles with named AI responsibilities indicate the relative importance FI’s are placing on the impact of AI across their businesses, which is no surprise following various international and domestic research reports on the potential impact of AI on both service quality and productivity/cost in FI’s.
A KWM survey for the Australian Finance Industry Association published in May 2025 sizes the total potential impact to Australian GDP over the period of 2025-2035 at $48.9Bn with a medium adoption scenario. Australian institutions will need to source the requisite expertise to build and roll out the teams, technology and processes to lock in these gains, with local talent in short supply/high demand.
It’s likely that the large banks will be racing to set up teams for their new AI focused GE’s and fighting for scarce AI talent. Noting that Mark Zuckerberg seems to have taken over personal responsibility for recruiting leading AI experts into Meta’s Superintelligence team, offering rumored to be up to $100m bonuses and taking several people from OpenAI.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING IN THE REAL MONEY FLOWS?
Australian superfunds have seen a meteoric rise over the past 10 years, accumulating both Funds and employees. It’s well documented how funds have consolidated, with margins under the microscope and increased scrutiny from regulators and investors.
Over the years funds have taken slightly different approaches to running themselves, marketing themselves and acquiring new customers.
For example, in 2015 Australian Super managed $92Bn with <500 employees predominantly in Australia (2 in Beijing). 2016 saw the opening of a London office and by 2020 funds had doubled to $182b with nearly 1000 employees, 32 based in London.
The New York office opened in 2021 and in 2025 assets have again doubled to >$360b with staff of nearly 2k, of which 121 are in London and 41 in NY. The fund hired a Head of Private Equity over this time and moved this role, plus various others to NY.
While Australian Super is currently the largest fund, this level of change is not unusual, with The Australian Retirement Trust now managing >$300b with employee levels at over 2.5k, noting that this operating model includes higher levels of in-house financial advisors due to the pre-merger business model of QSuper and Sunsuper.
The rise of private capital At the same time we have seen growth in private markets in Australia. Some of this will be driven by the accumulation of domestic capital but the larger driver could be the global trend towards private capital vs public markets. Debate over the drivers of the trend is active across academic institutions and regulators, with reasons ranging across listing requirements, skewed business incentives via monthly or quarterly reporting and the preference for founders to remain private. Regardless, Australia is a solid target investment location, with stable legal and political systems. As such, local and global firms have increased their presence.
Julia Patterson
Partner, Financial Services