ANZ today announced the appointment of Colin Neave AM as its Customer Fairness Advisor, a new role to help improve fairness of the bank’s products and services for retail, small business and wealth customers in Australia, reporting to Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott.
Following a distinguished career of public service at the highest levels, Mr Neave will shortly leave his role as Commonwealth Ombudsman. He is a former Chief Ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Australian Banking Industry Ombudsman, Chairperson of the Legal Services Board of Victoria and Vice Chair of the Australian Press Council.
Mr Neave was recognised as a Member of the Order of Australia in June 2005 for service to public administration and to the banking and finance industry.
Commenting on the appointment, Mr Elliott said: “This is a significant new appointment designed to help us more consistently deliver fair and responsible banking to our retail and small business customers.
“Colin’s deep experience in financial services, examining and resolving the most difficult of issues, makes him the ideal person to provide us with frank and independent assessments of the fairness of our products and services. This includes the impact they have on customers, particularly those in vulnerable situations.
“Colin’s initial focus will be to help us listen and to better understand the key retail and small banking issues by speaking to our customers and relevant stakeholders including our regulators and NGOs.
“As a first step Colin will be to help us establish our Remediation Principles so that we have a consistent set of standards we stick to when things do go wrong. He will also conduct a Fairness Review of our core retail deposit and credit products to ensure they continue to operate fairly, including their fees and charges. Our decade old basic banking account, for the most vulnerable, will be part of this review,” said Mr Elliott.
Mr Neave will be based in Melbourne and will commence with ANZ early in 2017.
