Commonwealth Bank CFO Rob Jesudason resigns

CBA’s chief financial officer is off to work for a Hong Kong blockchain firm after less than a year in the role.

Rob Jesudason at CBA’s Sydney offices. (Britta Campion/The Australian)

Commonwealth Bank chief financial officer Rob Jesudason has resigned with immediate effect after less than a year in the job, the latest senior manager to depart the embattled lender.

The resignation of Mr Jesudason, who has resigned to become second-in-command at a blockchain company in Hong Kong, comes just over a month after Matt Comyn took over as chief executive from Ian Narev.

Mr Jesudason, who has created a sixth vacancy in the CBA senior management team, has been named as chief operating officer of Block.one, a publisher of blockchain software called EOSIO and seller of the EOS token, a top-five cryptocurrency by market value at $US12.4 billion.

Alan Docherty, most recently the finance chief for CBA’s (CBA) institutional banking and markets arm, has been named acting chief financial officer.

Mr Comyn said the bank was making good progress with a renewal of the executive team and he expects to provide an update on appointments in the coming weeks.

CBA how has six vacancies in its senior leadership team, including the head of the group’s dominant retail bank - the position that new chief executive Matt Comyn vacated.

Block.one said its new recruit would be a board member and responsible for scaling the group’s global operations.

“Rob has a proven track record of success in global financial services, where he has been involved in industry innovation and facilitated regulatory advancement enabling the adoption of new technologies,” Block.one chief executive Brandan Blumer said.

“His alignment with our organizational priorities of creating compliant, high performance blockchain solutions, is an ideal fit for Block.one, and is an exciting conclusion to our thorough search for the right individual.”

Mr Jesudason said blockchain would have a transformative impact on most industries in the coming years, redefining operating models by streamlining businesses, while also reducing cost and risk.”

“Block.one’s technological innovation enables fast, low-cost, and scalable blockchain performance and is laying the groundwork for mass adoption of these new technologies,” he said.

“The market’s strong response to Block.one’s approach has resulted in it being one of the fastest growing organizations in the world, and this will inform our operational growth strategies going forward.”

Mr Jesudason is the latest in a long list of executives and board members to depart the bank in the wake of the money laundering scandal, which struck the bank last August.

The financial intelligence regulator Austrac last August sued the bank, claiming more than 50,000 breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation. The bank did not send the regulator thousands of legally required reports for transactions that were made through the company’s intelligent deposit machines. Austrac has claimed the machines did not go through rigorous compliance rules before and during the smart ATMs’ rollout from 2012 onwards.

CBA was late last month forced to put aside $1bn in extra regulatory capital following the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s review of the bank’s culture and governance, launched in the wake of the money laundering suit, the life insurance scandal and the financial planning debacle.

The review found the bank was guilty of “complacency”, having a “reactive stance”, as well as being insular and not learning from experience and mistakes.

Along with the departure of outgoing chief executive Ian Narev, who had his retirement announced just weeks after Austrac’s charges were first laid, the bank’s head of wealth management Annabel Spring has also left the bank. Non-executive directors Harrison Young and Launa Inman stepped down from the board last November.

Commonwealth Bank institutional boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned from the bank after missing out on the top job which went to Matt Comyn. Cavid Whiteing, chief information officer, has also flagged his intention to leave. Melanie Laing, group executive of human resources, has also left the nation’s largest bank, as has Barbara Chapman, the chief executive of the bank’s wholly owned New Zealand lender.

Long-serving board director Brian Long will leave the lender later this year, as will board director Andrew Mohl.

The litany of scandals rocking CBA has also started to bite. The bank last week disclosed a drop of nearly 10 per cent in quarterly profit amid signs more borrowers were falling behind on their mortgages.

After joining the bank in 2011, Mr Jesudason from 2015 was head of international financial services based in Hong Kong, where he was responsible for managing offshore growth in retail and commercial banking and life insurance in China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and South Africa. He began as chief financial officer last July.