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Asia-PacificApril 6 2008

Small fry battle the big four

It is a given that larger banks have scale in their favour but Australia’s smaller banks are playing on customer service in a bid to win business, writes Virginia Marsh.
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Singing kittens, talking flowers, painted smiles and sashes on statues around the nation, a happy banking website – these all feature in Halifax Bank of Scotland’s (HBOS) ‘assault’ on the status quo down under. The marketing approach might be quirky but the intent is anything but light-hearted. HBOS’s plans represent both the UK group’s biggest ongoing international project and the largest banking network roll-out ever undertaken from scratch in Australia.

“HBOS is certainly the most aggressive new player we’ve seen in Australia in many years. Its plans for the east coast are very ambitious,” says Martin McGrath, financial services partner at KPMG in Sydney. “If you are a major Australian bank, you have to sit up and take notice.”

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