St. George, owned by big four bank Westpac, has its creative account out to pitch, according to industry insiders.
Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi is the incumbent, appointed in 2015 and has worked with the brand since 2013.
Westpac and Publicis had no comment on the pitch process.
Peter King stepped in as Westpac Group chief executive officer in April 2020 and moved -- including Westpac, RAMS, St George Bank, Bank of Melbourne and Bank SA -- the $70 million media portfolio from GroupM to Publicis.
The last campaign from St.George Bank was its 2020 Christmas campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi, which followed 10-year-old Danny and his Little Dragon.
According to Brand Finance Australia, St George has had a notable 7% brand value decline. Westpac itself has also fallen with its brand value down 1% to AU$5.2 billion.
Competitors Commonwealth Bank (brand value up 28% to AU$11.4 billion), NAB (brand value up 36% to AU$7.9 billion) and ANZ (brand value up 22% to AU$7.6 billion) are all outranking Westpac and seeing brand value increase after the royal commission into banking fallout in 2019.
Westpac is in the midst of culling staff as part of a three-year program to reduce costs including reducing marketing roles by 20%.
Of the 90 affects roles, 65 will go with the remaining 25 phased out through natural attrition, The Australian reported last year.
The move came after Westpac appointed Annabel Fribence as its brand and marketing chief officer in November 2021.
More recently, across the group Westpac has sacked 750 employees in the last seven weeks.
Westpac is also in the middle of merging almost 100 of its main branches with subsidiaries such as St George to cut costs.
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