NAB management shake-up as CEO Ross McEwan makes his mark

New NAB chief Ross McEwan has swept through second-tier management, spilling a host of roles and making as many as 50 key appointments.

National Australia Bank CEO Ross McEwan meets his senior executive team during the coronavirus lockdown. Picture: Supplied.

National Australia Bank’s new chief executive Ross McEwan has launched a shake-up of second-tier management, spilling a host of roles and making as many as 50 key appointments.

As revealed by The Australian, the overhaul of key management roles one level down from Mr McEwan’s executive team were outlined earlier this week. They saw as many as 70 roles spilled, meaning managers had to reapply for their positions, with about 50 appointments subsequently locked in.

At NAB’s interim results, Mr McEwan flagged last week he wanted to institute a changed structure at NAB to boost end-to-end accountability of executives and management.

“We have a plan for the bank and we're starting to use that plan to drive our decisions and our actions… We want to move quickly,” he said. “We're making some structural changes to actually get this bank to make decisions faster through a better end-to-end decision making process. And we're looking to actually execute faster.”

Mr McEwan also said NAB was “too slow, far too complex” and management accountability hadn’t always been clear.

As part of the changes, Michael Saadie who is the acting group executive for the business and private bank was appointed to run business bank operations for metropolitan areas. He will continue to act as head of the division reporting directly to Mr McEwan until a successor to Anthony Healy is appointed.

The appointment suggests an external hire will replace Mr Healy, who parted ways with NAB last month.

Sources told The Australian the new direct report to Mr McEwan to lead the business and private bank would be a candidate viewed as an eventual potential successor to the CEO.

Some managers retained their positions as part of the second-tier changes.

Julie Rynski remains in the role of running regional business and agribusiness.

As part of the overhaul, Mr McEwan is bringing together the private bank, JBWere and nabtrade under Justin Greiner in an effort to streamline operations with a bigger focus on private wealth and relationships. The heads of the private bank and nabtrade report into Mr Greiner, who is the son of former NSW premier Nick Greiner.

In the personal bank, Krissie Jones continues to run retail operations, including branches.

Sources said about 50 per cent of the second-tier roles were filled within NAB’s largest division, the business and private bank, and a similar proportion of appointments were made in the personal bank. In the New Zealand division, all of the spilled management positions were filled, while in the institutional bank the ratio was 50-60 per cent.

A NAB spokesman confirmed the changes which he said were consistent with what the bank signalled last week.

At the interim results, Mr McEwan appointed the bank’s chief customer experience officer Rachel Slade to lead personal banking, replacing Mike Baird who left NAB in early April. Ms Slade joined NAB three years ago from Westpac.

Nathan Goonan was appointed group executive for strategy and innovation, in charge of transformation and all merger and acquisition activity. He rejoined NAB in 2013 and was most recently general manager of strategy and ­development.

NAB’s digital arm, UBank became one of five key divisions and will double down on customer ­acquisitions. Mr McEwan is yet to appoint a group executive to run UBank.

He also wants one person across NAB to take responsibility for home loans across the bank.