AMP talks tech
Screen scrapers, super and spending on tech were among the topics touched on by AMP head Paul Batchelor when he came to town.
Tuesday, October 24th 2000, 8:38PM
by Paul McBeth
Here's another buzzword to let slip when you're trying to impress people with your Internet savvy: screen scraper. And it's brought to you courtesy of AMP's chief executive Paul Batchelor, in New Zealand yesterday with chairman Stan Wallis for board meetings and a brief chat with media.
While screen scraper may sounds painful, it's now available to the company's Aussie customers and means that they get to play with their other bank accounts, use credit cards and so on (passwords and all) without leaving AMP's website.
And what a website. The AMP Direct service, launched during the Olympic Games (and with the good bits destined for Kiwi customers), lets people deal with their entire relationship with AMP online. That's everything from banking and cash management, insurance policies and super schemes to buying investments (with AMP and over 20 other fund managers) plus some online broking...all of which Batchelor and Wallis maintain is unique in Australia in terms of its scale. Not to mention that screen scraper thing, which is apparently pretty hot too.
"What it's enabling the customer is to deal with us in the way they wish," Batchelor says. "It's reshaping rather than restructuring the back office."
However, Batchelor is also quick to point out that a lot of the techie innovation for the AMP group is actually being generated in this country. The latest example is InvestorNet, which AMP's local head John Drabble says has already attracted $25 million in two months and which should go online in the next fortnight.
Billed as New Zealand's first Internet-based global wrap service, InvestorNet is a channel for investors to buy and sell units directly in WiNZ and the nine Hendersons' UK funds launched here recently. Drabble, noting that this taps into a market that AMP perhaps isn't strong in locally (InvestorNet comes with a $20,000 minimum), says it's also about "taking those lessons here and looking to leverage them elsewhere".
So back to Batchelor, who says AMP spends $A750 million on technology around the world "and if you look at the value for spend in New Zealand dollars versus sterling... it's vastly superior here".
Batchelor also maintains that AMP has a strong base in this country, with 90 per cent plus brand awareness and a return on equity that is one of the highest in the group.
As far as the local economy goes, "it's rather challenging at the moment, but I think we're seeing some positive signals from the Government in regard to some of the structural changes required".
"We applaud the Government's initiatives in view of the proposed prefunding (of superannuation)," he says.
"There are also positive trends in the recognition in New Zealand investors that they need to invest globally. The increasing sophistication of this market, both at the retail and the wholesale level, is something that the Government can get advantage of in encouraging private saving."