Customer service remains the Bank’s top strategic priority and while more than 60 per cent of our customers tell us they are satisfied with our service we still have some way to go before we achieve a level of service which we are happy with. However, we have made real progress in 2006:

• We have begun to embed our Sales and Service culture, which has been at the core of our subsidiary, ASB’s, success and have appointed a senior ASB executive to lead the programme which we have called “SUCCESS”;
  
  
• We are continuing to invest in our branches:
  – We refurbished another 133 branches;
  – We increased customer facing staff in the retail bank by 450 and have plans to replicate this in 2007; and
  – We are building new branches and are now opening 65 branches for business on Saturdays.
  
  
• We have introduced new and improved products which we believe will make us more competitive. These include the new “Yellow” credit card, NetBank Saver and new pricing option for the Streamline accounts. We also removed NetBank fees during the year.
  

While we have yet to see these improvements reflected in formal customer satisfaction surveys, we are beginning to see evidence of improvements in service delivery through feedback from our customers including a substantial reduction in the level of customer complaints.