The bank was still able to register statutory earnings of $3.58 billion, a 40 per cent decrease on the previous year.

Its shares fell 3 per cent mid morning to $18.58.

Outgoing chairman David Gonski, who retired after yesterday’s board meeting, said the gradual increase in dividends plus the payment of the deferred half-year dividend in September would help shareholders while remaining in line with guidance from the regulator, APRA.

Dividends for the second half of 2019 were 80 cents a share.

The bank also said had been 95,000 of its 1 million Australian mortgages that had received a deferral on repayments. About 55,000 had now completed their deferral and 79 per cent of these were returning to full repayments while 20 per cent had asked for a further deferral and 1 per cent had restructured their loan.

Chief executive Shayne Elliott said the bank could never have forecast 2020, but was confident ANZ could deal with the impacts because of its strong balance sheet as well as its provisioning.

“In Australia, we achieved strong growth in our targeted home loan segments with above-system growth in the owner-occupier market,” Elliott said.

“Deposits remained strong as customers took a sensible approach to managing their household balance sheets.

“We also saw an accelerated shift away from the use of cash.”

Elliott said the events of the past 21 months made it difficult to provide an outlook, but he claimed the bank was in a position to navigate the challenges.

“While we are not managing the business expecting things to return to the way they were before the pandemic, nor are we sitting idle waiting for the next event to happen to us,” he said.

“ANZ is well placed to respond to the opportunities that are emerging as a result of the accelerated structural shifts in the economy.”