Westpac has appointed retail and business banking chief Peter Hanlon as group executive for people and transformation with responsibility for modernising the Australian bank's technology and streamlining processes for customers.
Rob Coombe, former BT Financial Group chief executive, will replace Hanlon as group executive for retail and business banking.
In a statement announcing the reshuffle, Westpac CEO Gail Kelly said: "We have established a multi-brand business model with the successful merger with St George. The next phase of our transformation lies in significantly strengthening our focus on customers, people and productivity."
In his new role, Hanlon has been put in charge of the customer and productivity elements of the programme as well as corporate affairs and sustainability.
News of the appointments came as Westpac updated analysts on the group's merger and transformation programme. The bank says it has settled on the systems it will re-deploy across both Westpac and St George and has laid down a five-year blueprint for technology development across the unified group. These include plans for datacentre and supplier consolidation, new Internet banking and payments systems, and unification of the combined banks' core wealth and cards platforms.