ANZ drops KPMG as auditor after almost 60 years

ANZ has dropped KPMG after almost 60 years of it holding the $29 million contract to audit the bank’s accounts, in a fresh blow to the consulting firm that is dealing with the fallout from a damaging whistleblower scandal.

But despite the allegations roiling the firm, the professional body charged with upholding the standards of auditors has made no critical findings about KPMG in a report published on Friday afternoon.

ANZ will ditch KPMG from the 2029 financial year, ending a relationship that began in 1969.BloombergAn anonymous KPMG whistleblower warned the firm of a raft of serious allegations in 2024, including that senior partners had misused confidential information to win work, but his claims were dismissed until Senator Deborah O’Neill went public with the allegations in March.

That has led to companies including Macquarie Bank ditching KPMG as their auditors in a series of repercussions that escalated on Friday when ANZ announced its board had also decided to open up its contract for tender.

“ANZ’s external audit service has been provided by KPMG since 1969,” a spokesman said. He attributed the bank’s decision to the length of time KPMG had worked with the bank, and did not mention the whistleblower scandal that has led to numerous senior staff leaving and mass layoffs.

KPMG disclosed the results of a review into its culture and governance by Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand, which was sparked by the scandal, to its staff on Friday.

The review did not make broad findings about the firm, but did tell KPMG to improve its training, make clearer to staff what information was confidential, do more to apply ethical decision-making, and appoint a chief ethics officer.

The firm nominally accepted all the suggestions in response, according to a copy of the review seen by this masthead, but applied substantial caveats, including that it would “consider” the ethics office suggestion as part of its pre-existing plans for an integrity office.

KPMG chief executive John Sams noted that the report had not made critical findings about the organisation. “Its observations are encouraging,” Sams told staff in an email. “And acting on every suggestion will help us build stronger systems, clearer accountability and a culture in which doing the right thing is part of every decision we make.”

Chartered Accountants chief executive Ainslie van Onselen, who commissioned the review amid questions from parliamentarians about her oversight of the profession, said its standards were essential to ensuring trust.

“When serious questions arise it is important that we use the powers available to us to examine the systems and controls that support those standards,” she said in a statement.

A disclaimer on the accountancy organisation’s report noted that it was limited to areas defined in advance, and was not a guarantee that KPMG was complying with all professional standards. Several other investigations into KPMG are underway, including a major parliamentary inquiry.

Even before the whistleblower scandal emerged, the length of ANZ’s relationship with KPMG, and its predecessor firm Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co, was decades longer than recommended by a parliamentary committee and far outstripped the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ suggestion that auditors should be reviewed every five years.

Those recommendations are in place because new auditors sometimes detect issues that an incumbent firm had missed or downplayed.

KPMG has changed the partner overseeing the work numerous times in that period. There is no legal requirement for a company to rotate auditors.

The Australian Financial Review reported in November 2025 that ANZ was considering putting its audit contract out for tender, months before the whistleblower allegations became public in March 2026.

The ANZ spokesman said the tender process would be done by the end of April 2027, with the new auditor in place by the 2029 financial year. KPMG will not be eligible to participate in the tender.

“The board considered that this timing of the tender process to be appropriate given the significant transformation agenda under way and the planned integration of Suncorp Bank,” the spokesman said.

Auditing underpins trust in Australia’s financial sector, and companies must have faith that they can disclose their most sensitive information to their audit firm for the process to work.

KPMG declined to add to its chief executive’s email or comment on ANZ’s decision.

On Friday, the Financial Times reported that KPMG’s global general counsel, Sydney-based Anne Collins, had left the role. Her retirement coincides with a long-planned changeover of the firm’s global chief executive.

Both Collins and Gary Wingrove, the incoming chief executive, had previously appeared before the parliamentary committee investigating KPMG’s handling of the whistleblower’s claims.

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