Acting NAB CEO Phil Chronican reflects on ‘enormity of challenge’ facing bank after Hayne

Acting NAB CEO uses his first day to tell staff they must focus on customers in the same way that airlines are obsessed with safety.

NA’s acting CEO Phil Chronican.

Acting National Australia Bank chief executive Phil Chronican has vowed to compensate aggrieved customers faster and fix the bank’s culture after it took a battering at the Hayne royal commission.

Mr Chronican, who is in his first official day in the top job, sent a memo to NAB’s top 100 leaders on Thursday night urging the need for change and to “re-earn trust” among customers and the broader community. He also stressed the “enormity of the challenge”, reflecting the turbulent period NAB has endured including revelations of wrongdoing across its loan introducer program and advice business.

“I want to emphasise the role each one of us needs to commit to as members of the Executive Leadership Group (ELG). We are the bank’s most senior leaders: we need to run the bank — and we need to change it,” Mr Chronican said in the memo.

“It’s us, and that ‘us’ includes the NAB Board, who are accountable for driving the cultural shift that our customers and the community demand. The ‘why’ is stark.”

Mr Chronican also cited the “gap” raised by the Hayne royal commission of NAB’s accountability for past wrongdoing and compliance failures and said the bank hadn’t met the standards expected from customers, shareholders and the community.

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne took a swipe at NAB in the landmark report, made public last month, and his criticism saw the exits of CEO Andrew Thorburn and chairman Ken Henry announced just days later.

Mr Chronican — a former ANZ Bank and Westpac executive and a NAB board director — is acting in the CEO role while a global search is underway.

He hasn’t wasted any time in telling staff of the bank’s new ethos.

“I am focused on making sure we compensate customers as quickly as possible; and on fixing the issues that caused the failure. I am equally focused on putting customers first,” he said in the memo.

“The opportunity and the expectation we must have of ourselves is that we will lead the change the community wants to see — from NAB and the industry.

“This starts with customers and culture. It’s not enough to simply focus on our customers; we need to obsess about getting it right for them, every time. We need to bring the same obsession to customer outcomes that airline companies do to safety. We must deliver an exceptional experience, ensure our products and services provide fair value, and be uncompromising on accountability, quality and standards.”

Mr Thorburn parted ways with NAB on Thursday after he and Dr Henry were singled out by the Hayne report.

“I was not persuaded NAB is willing to accept the necessary responsibility for deciding, for itself, what is the right thing to do, and then having its staff act accordingly,” Mr Hayne said in the report.

Mr Chronican told staff in the memo he was confident NAB had a “clear path forward and a road map to deliver meaningful change”.

“It’s clear our people do great work every day: serving customers, finding solutions, fixing issues and paying back customers what they are owed. In many ways, they embody the NAB we want to be,” he said.

“Together as the ELG, we have to demonstrate the leadership needed to make sure we get there. We will put our customers first in the decisions we make.

“The enormity of the challenge ahead is not lost on any of us. But through the accelerated One NAB Plan and our self-assessment, I’m confident we have a clear path forward and a road map to deliver meaningful change.”

A town-hall meeting is being conducted by Mr Chronican at NAB’s Bourke Street office in Melbourne today.

He spoke to NAB’s top 500 managers on Thursday night, and conducted several calls and meetings across a number of teams including remediation and small business units in recent days.