Report into Commonwealth Bank’s cultural overhaul to provide fresh fuel ahead of bank chiefs’ grilling

A report into the progress of CBA’s cultural overhaul will land just ahead of the bank’s CEO taking the Canberra hot seat.

Andrew Thorburn, Group Chief Executive Officer of NAB appearing at a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

Any day is a good day for a productive discussion with Commonwealth Bank about its culture.

Just ask APRA, which spent the best part of eight months doing precisely that before releasing the findings of its prudential inquiry in May.

As luck would have it, the word on the street is that Canberra’s new banking inquisitor Tim Wilson will have the benefit of the first independent assessment of progress on CBA’s cultural overhaul before applying the blowtorch to chief executive Matt Comyn on Thursday.

Sometime before then, CBA will release Promontory Financial Group’s quarterly update on CBA’s progress against the 35 recommendations made by APRA in its review.

Comyn said last June that he expected to deliver the plan over the ensuing 12 months, so don’t expect Promontory to announce this week that the job is done and dusted.

The content of the first update is likely to be limited to processes and procedures put in place to do the grunt work.

Wilson won’t need any excuse to remind Comyn of CBA’s string of governance failures, but the first Promontory report will provide a useful context for what is expected to be a bruising encounter.

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