The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has used its annual general meeting (AGM) to stress the “vigour” with which it approached its recently-launched advice remediation program, admitting it responded far too slowly to consumer concerns at first.
In an address to shareholders, CBA chairman David Turner noted “the additional public scrutiny” the bank has received in the last 12 months, but said the bank did its utmost to right its wrongs over the period.
“In the past 12 months, it became clear that a number of stakeholders believed we had not done enough.”
“I believe we have acted with integrity, with determination and given the complexity of the process, we’ve acted with vigour,” he said.
“We are very sorry indeed that some customers received poor advice and we know that saying sorry is not enough and action is required.”
He said the key tenet of the Open Advice Review Program is external mediators and experts, which ensure “the bank will not be the arbiter of what is just”.
CBA chief executive, Ian Narev, said while the bank “set out to do the right thing” as soon as problems with its planning businesses were revealed, it was “too slow to listen to views that more needed to be done”.
