Appearing before the standing committee on economics’ review into the major banks on Wednesday, ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott noted that the senior management of the bank has “changed considerably” since he took over in January 2016.
Mr Elliott, who was seated alongside ANZ group executive for wealth management Alexis George, faced questions from committee chairman David Coleman about the banks handling of compliance breaches in its product manufacturing business OnePath.
Mr Coleman asked whether there had been any “consequences” for ANZ staff after ASIC identified “significant” breaches within OnePath in March 2016 and ordered an independent review of the business.
The total compensation bill was increased to $10.5 million (up from the original estimate of $4.5 million) in August 2017.
In response to Mr Coleman’s question, Ms George was evasive about the consequences for specific individuals as a result of the OnePath failings, which she said could include “development opportunities, remuneration and promotions”.
“I can’t recall the individual ones now because we’re talking about several years ago, but there would have been consequences for some of those people as a result of that … I honestly don’t know the individual consequences,” Ms George said.
Mr Elliott said the senior management of the wealth division has “changed considerably” since he took the top job in January 2016.
“Were performance issues in regard to the business performance and were some of the risk issues taken into account when we were making decisions around the right executives to run that business? Absolutely, they were, and that’s why we’ve seen a reasonable amount of change,” he said.
“I think what Alexis is referring to is that down in the more operational areas of the bank there were clearly consequences for those people as well, people who are either no longer with the bank or had their incentives changed or had their promotional or career opportunities changed as a result.”
