Managing ​​​​​​​the Mix

A Desire To Keep Learning, Combined With A Commitment To Embrace Flux, Propels Cathy Yuncken, General Manager Of Business Banking For The St.george Group, Into The Increasingly Digital Future.

- Jennifer Sijnja

Cathy Yuncken, General Manager of Business Banking for the St.George Group, emerged as “a wide-eyed baby banker” during a thrilling time in Australian banking. “It was the late 1980s,” she tells The CEO Magazine, “and deregulation had seen the Aussie dollar floated and a wave of foreign banks coming into the market, as stock markets, and then property markets, boomed – before they went bust. I had a crash course in banking and financial markets.”

After spending the first half of her 30-year career “basically learning to be a banker”, Cathy has since progressed through a range of leadership roles, and these days she oversees a division of the Westpac Group incorporating St.George Bank, Bank SA, and Bank of Melbourne. The three brands are “very different, operating in different geographic markets with very different histories and cultures and in very different competitive positions”. Suffice to say, hers is an incredibly dynamic role.

It is one, too, in which Cathy is constantly taking the opportunity to learn, and she uses her knowledge of historical market conditions “to inform my leadership within the current market context”, welcoming the constant flux in the banking industry. “I love the perpetual contest of business – the race is never run,” she says, and she is making sure the Group is in a position to welcome the challenges presented by an “increasingly digital world”.