In his opening address to the Parliamentary Committee today NAB’s CEO Andrew Thorburn highlighted enforcement of behavioral standards in the the bank.
Accountability; accountability is a fundamental principle in our bank. It’s my role to make sure that executives know what they’re accountable for and what behaviour is expected of them. This is then cascaded all the way down through the bank.
We have four key accountability areas. These are consistent through our company. The four are: customers, risk management, financial performance and team or people.
In addition to that, wrapping around it is our company values and our code of conduct. Feedback is then provided to people on a monthly basis and then at the half way point and at the full year we wrap that all up in a rigorous, disciplined and serious way.
But there are consequences for people if our behavioural standards are not met.
Since I was here last, we’ve completed our financial year 2016 year and over that year there were 1138 people in our bank who were deemed to have not met our code of conduct.
This follows a discipline review in every case by a specialist team that we have. The consequences for those people ranged from a formal warning, through to dismissal. It also involves a reduction or elimination of any bonus.
Of the 1138 there were five senior managers – two were dismissed, and three faced other disciplinary action.
We also went back and looked at issues over the past two years, applied this standard and we’ve taken similar action against 48 additional people.
Also, since we were here last we’ve made it a formal policy in the bank, that any prudential breach must be investigated by a dedicated and specialist team.
The message here to all our people is that we are in a position of trust. We have high standards, they are expected to be met and if they are not there are consequences.
