Via Banking Day:
National Australia Bank chief Andrew Thorburn has decided to buy back public trust in his scandal-fraught company by sparing more than 900,000 home borrowers a rate hike this month.
The bank will hold its variable rate mortgage for owner-occupiers at 5.24 per cent – a significant discount to its three major rivals that have all announced repricings in the past fortnight.
Thorburn last night pitched the rate-hold decision as a free gift to NAB’s mortgage customers and a demonstration of NAB’s desire to mend its breaches of public trust.
“We need to rebuild trust over time by listening and acting differently,” he said.
“Our bank is based on our customers – their loyalty is really important to us and we need to appreciate them more.”
The NAB boss acknowledged that additional wholesale funding pressures had been carried by the bank since early this year, but hinted that they might not have been as great as other banks claimed.
“We are not immune to market and funding conditions and there has been some pressure there,” he said.
Rather than resign as they should, Thorburn and Henry go the big bribe. How is this supposed to repair trust in banks? The trust isn’t broken because of interest rates. It is broken because the bank turned into a thief, via the ABC:
The corporate regulator is taking NAB to court, alleging it misled superannuation customers and wrongly took $100 million in fees from hundreds of thousands of fund members.
ASIC has commenced proceedings in the Federal Court against NULIS Nominees and MLC Nominees, which are the entities responsible for NAB’s super funds.
The regulator is seeking declarations that the NAB trustees broke the law, as well as civil penalties.
ASIC has alleged NULIS and MLC Nominees deducted $33 million in fees from 220,000 members of the MLC MasterKey Business and MLC MasterKey Personal Super products despite not allocating them an adviser.
The watchdog also alleges NAB deducted $67 million in fees from 300,000 members of the MLC MasterKey Personal Super product, where members either received no financial planning services or services they could have received for free anyway.
“We will consider carefully the allegations that have been made,” NAB chief legal counsel Sharon Cook said in a statement.
And then offer a rates bribe to take the heat off Andrew Thorburn and Ken Henry, both of whom should already be in the dole queue.
It won’t be long before the public extracts its own pound of flesh, via Herald Sun:
UP TO five million Australians could get thousands of dollars back from the big banks under what is set to be the largest class action in the nation’s history.
Law firm Slater and Gordon will today launch an unprecedented wave of legal action on behalf of around one in three Australian workers believed to have their super invested as cash with the banks.
It is estimated the landmark lawsuits could get some account holders as much as $3000 back and end up costing the banks more than $1 billion.
Where are the perp walks?
