Banking royal commission: CBA chief Matt Comyn says former boss Ian Narev

CBA chief Matt Comyn says his efforts to stop the bank offering controversial products were stymied by former executives.

Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn said his predecessor Ian Narev told him to temper his “sense of justice” on the issue of stopping the controversial sale of consumer insurance credit products.

In further damaging revelations to the bank and Mr Narev, Mr Comyn continued to argue that his efforts to get CBA to stop offering the products were ignored, the Hayne royal commission heard today.

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In a meeting steered by then CEO Mr Narev, where Mr Comyn said he took hand written notes of proceedings he was told to tone down his opposition to the products.

“’Temper your sense of justice’ that is what Mr Narev said to me,” Mr Comyn said, while being questioned over the chain of the events.

“We had, I think, quite a robust discussion during the course of that meeting and my recommendation to suspend the sales was not agreed with.”

Mr Comyn also outlined that he and the then head of wealth management, Annabel Spring, disagreed on the course of action required on the products in question.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Rowena Orr QC was fiercely questioning Mr Comyn in the witness box about the events and followed up by asking if he thought CBA had the right leaders in the past?

He responded “no”.

On the current leadership of which he is at the helm, Mr Comyn said: “We will see, I hope so”.

CBA inappropriately sold the products, which included credit card and personal loan insurance, to 64,000 customers that didn’t require them and couldn’t claim on all of the benefits offered by policies. The bank later agreed with the corporate regulator to remediate customers to the tune of $15 million for one of the product types.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn leaves the hearing yesterday. Picture: AAP

Under further intense questioning, Mr Comyn admitted that the remediation process was still ongoing and that in the past the average time to repay customers was “well in excess” of a year to remediate a customer. He is aiming to get that benchmark down to 90 days.

“I accept there is a lot of room for improvement,” Mr Comyn added.

Of the $15m credit card insurance remediation, CBA had so far paid about $10.5 million. For loan protection insurance the bank has set aside about $31 million for customer repayments.

Ms Orr QC, was quick to point out, however, that negotiations between CBA and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on how to remediate impacted customers in at least one product line had stretched out for almost two years.

Day two of the final round at the commission was also damning for the CBA board, and prior chairman David Turner.

Ms Orr questioned why Mr Comyn had not raised his ongoing concerns about the poor value and compliance risks associated to consumer credit insurance with the CBA board.

“I thought it would have been pushed back to the CEO to oversee it,” he responded.

“I certainly judged my chances of success at that point as being very unlikely,” he said, adding that he believed Mr Turner “would have relied on, solely on, Mr Narev’s recommendation”.

Mr Comyn added that current CBA chairman Catherine Livingstone was “very different” and had an “enormous focus” on compliance and customer advocacy.

Mr Comyn is the first of the big bank CEOs to front the royal commission this week. Ms Livingstone is expected to step into the witness box today, followed by Westapc Bank chief Brian Hartzer and Macquarie Group retiring boss Nicholas Moore.

ASIC chairman James Shipton rounds out this week’s Sydney hearings.