NAB chief Ross McEwan hits the road on branch and customer tour
Seeking new wisdom, NAB new chief Ross McEwan has decided it’s time to get out of Docklands and hit the road.
The rubber hits the road this week on new National Australia Bank chief executive Ross McEwan’s decentralisation of the group’s strategy development.
Kicking off in Darwin on Monday, McEwan will tour the country for two to three weeks, visiting branches, meeting face-to-face with SME customers, attending customer events, hosting town-hall meetings and conducting Q&A sessions.
The former Royal Bank of Scotland boss wants to cast the strategy net widely, believing that the bank’s Docklands headquarters in Melbourne is not the sole repository of wisdom.
After Darwin, it’s on to Adelaide, Bunbury, Perth, Rockhampton, Brisbane, Newcastle, Hobart, Launceston and Geelong.
Sydney and Melbourne also get a look in.
It’s not to say that everything in the bank is broken.
McEwan told investors at last December’s annual meeting that NAB started “from a very good position and an enviable position in areas like business banking.
“We’ve got a very good corporate and institutional bank and we’ve actually got a lot of work we could do on the retail bank to actually make that a stronger player,” he said.
Against that, there was still a lot of work to do to rebuild lost trust and respect, and think about what the market might look like in five to ten years.
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