Acting NAB chief executive and chairman-elect Phil Chronican yesterday promised the bank's 588,000 shareholders that his executive team would "step up the pace" on remediating customers burnt by the fee for no service scandal.In his first outreach to the company's bruised shareholder base since the departure of former CEO Andrew Thorburn, Chronican said the organisation needed to "earn back" the trust of its stakeholders."That begins with making sure we fix the issues that caused our failures and we pay back customers who are owed compensation as soon as possible," he stated in a letter."Since June last year, we have returned more than A$110 million to more than 310,000 customers - and we are stepping up the pace."Chronican's pledge to speed up the compensation process for customers ripped off by the bank's fee for no service practices came less than a day after ASIC panned the response of NAB and other banks to the industry-wide scandal.In a report issued by ASIC on Monday, NAB's JB Were subsidiary was identified by the regulator for dragging its heels to remediate customers.JB Were has not yet given ASIC a time-frame for completing a review of its customer files to gauge how many were affected by the calamitous practice."JB Were has not provided a compensation methodology proposal to ASIC," the regulator observed in a report on NAB and other major banks.Chronican echoed Thorburn's well-worn rhetoric regarding the company's program to reform itself."The enormity of this task is not lost on me, because the royal commission is right," he told shareholders."There is a big gap between where we are today and where we need to be."Chronican said the board's reform program (announced last year) and the royal commission's final report had set out a clear way forward for NAB to earn trust and build a culture that puts the customer first."It will not be enough to focus on customers; we need to obsess about getting it right for them every single time."The bank, which had its remuneration report shot down by a record vote of shareholders at the annual meeting last December, is now developing a more "appropriate" executive pay method."The board heard loud and clear that the 2018 remuneration outcomes did not meet your  [shareholders'] expectations or the community's expectations," he said."We will make sure compensation appropriately reflects the individual and collective performance of the executive team."Chronican hinted that his time as acting CEO might only be brief after he stated that he would "assume the chairman's role later in 2019".Previous to this statement, several analysts had suggested that the board could take up to a year to appoint the next permanent CEO.