The congested, and now mostly mandated, strategic investment priorities of Westpac will have to draw funding from sparsely funded investment pool, the bank’s 2020 annual meeting heard on Friday.

“In 2020 we spent around $1.7 billion,” Peter King, the Westpac CEO told the meeting.

Given changes in digital channels and in digital demand from customers … we know we need to spend money to compete and meet risk, so I see a similar level of spend going forward,” King said, responding to the first question raised at the AGM by the Australian Shareholders Association.

Meeting unbudgeted and often critical investment needs arising from regulatory intervention (almost commonplace at the bank) will dampen the reality of the chair, John McFarlane’s qualified pledge on dividend policy.

“I’m hopeful we will return to a more consistent dividend each half,” was a much as McFarlane would say.

“I am conscious how important dividends are to individual shareholders and know how unhappy you have been about the decision not to pay a first-half dividend as well as the lower dividend for the year.

“We did seek to pay a higher final dividend by having a fully underwritten dividend reinvestment program which avoided impacting our already strong capital but were constrained by the regulatory cap of 50 per cent of statutory profits,” he said.