Google Nabs NAB CMO Suzana Ristevski

Suzana Ristevski, CMO of NAB, has announced her departure from the banking giant to take on the lead in the marketing operation at Google, starting in June.

Ristevski succeeds long-serving marketing Aisling Finch, who left Google last year after more than a decade at the tech giant.

“I’m very sad to be leaving the wonderful team at NAB,” Ristevski told B&T. “But I’m incredibly excited to be joining such an amazing company in Google.”

“Suzana will join us in June and brings over 30 years of cross-industry experience in financial services, telecommunications, private health insurance, and industrial sectors,” wrote Google’s APAC marketing chief, Simon Kahn, on LinkedIn.

“Her proven track record in driving sustainable growth through strategic marketing, coupled with her deep understanding of the market and reputation as an innovative change-maker, will no doubt be invaluable in elevating our marketing efforts. I am excited for Suzana to leverage her expertise and extensive experience to propel our passionate Google AUNZ Marketing team to even greater heights.”

Ristevski has been with NAB since 2017, starting out as the general manager of business banking, marketing and customer strategy. She worked her way up through the rankings to become the chief marketing officer in 2020.

Ristevski was recently inducted into B&T’s CMO Powerlist and lauded for her work restoring trust in the bank following a tough few years in the sector.

“When I started, we walked into a Royal Commission, trust was at the lowest levels that it had ever been and awareness for Gen Z was dropping significantly,” she explained to B&T.

“It was kind of dire. Part of it was NAB itself but it affected all the financial services institutions. And then we had COVID and rate increases.”

She also led NAB on a remarkable journey of martech improvements, saying “Over the last three years, we’ve swapped out 95 per cent of all the marketing tools and technology that we use to drive personalisation.

“We’ve introduced a decision engine and customer data platform to deliver 500 million customised and wonderful customer experiences.

“We can pre-empt when a customer is likely to be hit with fraudulent activity and be able to communicate with them through all of our channels. We’ve also used AI to open the opportunity for NAB to communicate through various channels proactively and service our customers well.”

That technically savvy outlook on life will doubtless pay dividends at Google.

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Google NAB National Australia Bank Suzana Ristevski