CBA sets up customer advocate function
The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has established a customer advocate function as part of the banking industry initiatives package announced by the Australian Bankers' Association in April.
General manager, customer advocacy and remediation, Dr Brendan French, would head the function, while the function would report to the group executive, marketing and strategy, Vittoria Shortt.
The function would focus on three main areas, including advocacy for customer outcomes and complaint resolutions, prevention, and proactively looking for areas where customer concerns could arise and taking action, and remediation for customers where things have gone wrong.
Shortt said the function would be centralised and separate from the Group's business units.
"This function will ensure we have an even stronger focus on the entire customer experience. It will improve accountability in decision making and ensure that the balance between customer outcomes and business outcomes is fair," Shortt said, adding the bank would work with the government, industry and customer groups to run the function.
In response to the ABA's proposal in April, the banking industry said it would set up this independent customer advocate in every bank to represent retail and small business customers, where complaints related to the bank are escalated and responded to within a certain timeframe.
An Independent Governance Expert Report resulting from a process initiated by the ABA said it would not be until the end of 2017 before the banking industry would implement measures to tackle product sales commissions to banking staff.
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