We made significant progress on our four strategic priorities in the 2007 financial year and have also introduced a fifth priority – Profitable Growth.
Customer Service Our continued focus on embedding a Sales and Service culture across the Group has begun to translate into tangible improvements in customer satisfaction. We have seen significant improvement in customer satisfaction within the retail bank with the Roy Morgan customer satisfaction up 5.6%, our best rating in ten years. We have also seen the retail bank customer complaints fall by 43% on 2006, and customer compliments increased by 23% for the same period. Complaints in business banking have also dropped.
Business Banking We have restructured our business focusing on the different needs of our business customers. We have embarked on a strategy of returning business bankers to the branches for our SME customers, adding front line staff to our middle markets business; adding specialist bankers in 63 new locations; and providing a 24/7 telephone access for our local business banking customers. Our technology platforms CommSee and CommBiz provide us with the ability to better meet the needs of our customers.
Technology & Operational Excellence We plan to invest and build on the successes we have had with our existing industry leading systems which include CommSec, FirstChoice, CommSee, CommBiz and NetBank. Over the last 12 months, our IT efficiency ratio improved as we target achieving international best practice. We successfully delivered a significant number of projects which will improve customer service, increase operational efficiency and enhance systems reliability and security.
Trust and Team Spirit We have seen higher levels of engagement and commitment from our people translate into improved internal culture survey scores, with some of the biggest improvements in the retail banking area. During the year, workplace injury rates fell 30%; employee voluntary turnover rate fell 13%; and absenteeism was down 7%.
Profitable Growth We are looking for opportunities to enhance our future growth. We have already identified a number of opportunities including growing our existing investments in Asia; further growth in Colonial First State Global Asset Management; expanding our Global Markets Business and leveraging cross sell opportunities across the Group.
