NAB reinvests $200 m into wealth management

NationalAustralia Bank (NAB) will reinvest $200 million into its Australian wealth management division over the next three years as part of its ‘Positioning for Growth’ program announced last week.

Called OneSource, the internal project to reinvigorate NAB’s wealth management division will be carried out in three phases.

Phase one will focus on enhancing the services to advisers, with NAB’s Wealth Management division taking on the job of consolidating the reporting for MasterKey and other products. The first phase is expected to use 25 per cent of the available $200 million.

Phase two will see 15 per cent of the funds used to improve Wealth Management’s customer service, which NAB Wealth Management executive general manager Peter Scott says will involve enhancing existing call centres.

And in the final stage of the Wealth Management program, the remaining 60 per cent of funds will go towards increasing back-office efficiency for advisers, such as the upgrading of old products and the closing down of some systems.

The reinvestment is a key element of NAB’s Positioning for Growth program, outlined by NAB managing director and chief executive Frank Cicutto.

However, the program will result in up to 1,500 redundancies in Australia over the next 18 months, including in the wealth management division.

“We’ve had to make some hard decisions. There will be people who won’t be a part of the future, as we have had to make some redundancies,” Scott says.

Under the NAB initiative, a further $90 million will be reinvested into developing the group’s UK wealth management operations.