ANZ to women: Don’t get mad, get even
Why ANZ has teamed up with filmmaker Jane Campion to get women to fight for a more equal financial future
ANA-MARIE LOCKYER understands better than most why it’s so critical for women to get their financial act together.
As a banker, (Lockyer heads up ANZ’s KiwiSaver business) she sees first-hand what happens when women don’t have enough savings; how they struggle to eke out a meager pension.
She worries about figures that show women earn less than men, have less saved at 65, and are less confident of reaching their financial goals.
Perhaps more crucially, she knows women are less likely than men to make time to think about how they are going to fund their retirement; and she knows the damage that choice can have.
But it’s as a mother of three young daughters, where these issues have become gutwrenchingly personal.
Lockyer wants her daughters to turn out confident, independent, secure women. But the evidence in front of her every day at work shows that unless they seek the right information and make the right decisions, that probably isn’t going to happen.
“All too often, money is something that we as women put to the back of our minds, and we wait for others to make the decisions for us.
“Life is so busy and your financial future is one of the things you just forget to think about.” Sound familiar? In late July, ANZ launched a series of measures, including: a short movie commissioned from award-winning filmmaker Jane Campion; the Wise Women retirement planning website; and the #EqualFuture social media campaign – all aimed at getting the message across to women to get their retirement act together. The campaign highlights a number of disturbing statistics for New Zealand women:
They earn on average $300 a week less than men, or $600,000 across their lifetime;
They have an average of 28% less in their KiwiSaver account than men, a gap which is increasing each year, and could leave them $60,000 or more worse off at retirement;
They are more likely than men to be in a conservative fund (whether through lack of action moving from a default fund, or because of natural inclination against risk is unclear), which could knock $90,000 off their savings;
They are more likely to take a KiwiSaver contributions holiday, either to bring up children or look after elderly relatives. A five-year break at age 30 could mean $50,000 less at 65.
They are less confident about reaching their financial goals than men. While 55% of men believe they are on track financially, only 34% of women have the same conviction.
Lockyer says ANZ recognised the bank
needed to be actively talking to women.
“No one likes to think about retirement, but what I would like my daughters and all New Zealand females to know is: Are they on track for what they want to end up with when they retire?”
She says ANZ initially started with seminars, but the new initiatives take this further. The Wise Woman pages on ANZ’s FutureWise site (anz.co.nz/FutureWise) provide information and tools geared specifically to women, and #EqualFuture sees ANZ joining in what is a global debate around equality.
The bank is also putting its money where its mouth is, announcing it will pay the KiwiSaver employer contributions for all staff on paid parental leave.
Still, it’s the Jane Campion short film ( put “ANZ Jane Campion” into YouTube to find it) that gets Lockyer most excited.
The movie, launched on July 29, features a bunch of young girls (including a spectacular eight-year- old Japanese karate black belt) being sad and stroppy in turn about the fact that girls’ brains develop faster than boys, yet women end up with significantly lower lifetime earnings and almost 50% less superannuation than their male counterparts globally.
“Our CEO for Global Wealth, Joyce Phillips is hugely passionate about this issue and she wanted to find someone who could tell the story, could engage people in this story and start the conversation.
“Jane is passionate about gender and nurturing talent and she led a team who were almost all women. We provided some stats to start telling the story, but at the end of the day it was Jane’s story and she did an amazing job.
“You look at it and you go: ‘It’s true, it’s so true.’ It works so well to tell the story we are trying to tell and get people talking.”
The film is set for circulation via social media, rather than the small (or big) screen – initially at least.
“We think it’s about having a conversation; people talking about it. We don’t want to be preaching about it. There are no right answers in this – everyone makes their own decisions.”
Lockyer says the success of the campaign will be measured in a number of ways, just one of which will be any increase in KiwiSaver contributions from ANZ’s 300,000 female customers.
“That’s more a measure for us of whether the message is getting through. It’s not something where we are setting targets.
“Success for me from all these initiatives would be seeing women engaging actively with their KiwiSaver accounts, taking actions today that will give them the best outcomes in the future.
“I hope that by sharing the message, they will take action today that will give them a better retirement in the future.
“I’m not asking everyone to contribute more, but I want people to make the right choices, to take time to think about their financial goals, seek out the right information and ask the questions.”