In presenting Australia and New Zealand Banking Group's half-year profits, chief executive officer Shayne Elliott claimed that ANZ was unique among its Big Four peers in reducing costs by one per cent over the past year.Elliott pointed out that costs had come down in two consecutive half-year periods, "while essentially running the same bank"."While we've announced the sales of [business], with the exception of the Esanda business, none of these have actually dropped out of the bank yet," he told a group of analysts and insto investors.Operating expenses decreased 14 per cent, although excluding some specified one-off and big ticket items, operating expenses were down one per cent on "business as usual" costs."As those [non-core] businesses come out, we will see costs continue to fall and, by further simplifying our business - by further decluttering - we want to see our cost base come down, although we will have to eat some cost inflation," Elliott said.In saying that, ANZ has made some changes to how it's reporting key items, such as software capitalisation, and restructuring expenses decreased by A$102 million (down 74 per cent on the previous year), reflecting a larger investment in 2016 as the group reset its strategy to focus more on its home markets.Technology expenses therefore decreased by $502 million (down 38 per cent on the previous period), primarily as the result of software capitalisation policy charges of $556 million in the March 2016 half. Excluding this, technology expenses increased $54 million - an increase of seven per cent, due to higher amortisation from software.Personnel expenses decreased $153 million (down five per cent) due to a seven per cent reduction in average fulltime equivalent positions, partially offset by higher wages.While staff costs were down, higher average funding costs were one of the factors responsible for a seven basis point decline in ANZ's net interest margin, compared to the same half last year.This led UBS bank analyst Jon Mott to point out that the cost base from the previous result was $4.7 billion, and from there to ask what ANZ's absolute cost base would be when the process is complete.While not prepared to offer a firm target for his expense base, Elliott said, "We expect the number to be materially lower.""That is the objective here - we are entering into a lower growth environment. We have to be really tight in how we allocate capital and the same with costs."We've had costs down one per cent - that's hard, and I think we are alone amongst our peers to be able to deliver cost down. And that is not the end," Elliott said. Michelle Jablko, ANZ group CFO, said: "The costs we've taken out to date have been pretty targeted. Taking duplication out of the business, where a lot of [our] focus has been to date - with a big part of that being directly in the institutional business; there's more to do, and we're working on that now."And as we become smaller - for example, as we