Organizational Structure of Australian Banks

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As an organization develops, it establishes among many things a sense of structure. In this; depending on its purpose of existence and how it carries out processes to meets its goals, it attempts to structure its staff and departments to optimize resource usage and maximize profits. Simply put, it is the way the company is organized to perform work. However as a generally noticeable trend, businesses are changing over the years and as Craig A. Stevens (1995) sites, "There may not even be one right organizational structure in any one company. Chances are, if all your divisions look the same on the organizational chart you have a problem.”
Organizational Structure of Australian Banks
The first bank to be established in Australia was the Bank of New South Wales, which was established in Sydney in 1817, with Edward Smith Hall as its cashier and secretary. Through the 19th and early 20th century, the Bank grew rapidly to open branches throughout Australia and Oceania. From these humble beginnings, today, Australia’s 4 largest banks – The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank, ANZ Banks and Westpac Banks, together hold approximately $1.9trillion in assets on their domestic books and are reasonably large by international standards ranking in terms of consolidated group assets, among the top 60 banks worldwide. Apart from the four major banks, Australia’s banking system also currently consists of seven other Australian-owned banks and 43 foreign-owned banks operating either as branches and/or locally incorporated subsidiaries. While the assets of the 4 major banks grew about 1.7 times from 1990 to 2010. Over the same period, commercial bank assets grew 1.2 times, the assets of nonbank subsidiaries grew more than 3.0 ti...

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...rovide the framework, infrastructure and support that the operating groups require to manage their business. These are the Corporate Operations, Financial Management, Legal and Governance, and Risk Management Groups.

In addition to their banking activities, many Australian-owned banking groups (including the four major banks) have sizeable funds management operations in Australia and, to a lesser extent, overseas. Two Australian-owned banks, Suncorp Bank and AMP Bank, belong to financial groups that generate more of their income from insurance and funds management activities than from banking activities. Macquarie Bank – the sixth largest Australian-owned bank in terms of domestic banking sector assets – undertakes predominantly investment banking activities, generating around two-thirds of its net operating income from trading income, and fees and commissions.

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