The Finance Sector Union has begun drawing public battlelines for a dispute with the National Australia Bank over whether staff employed in the financial planning division may have committed breaches of company policy when they witnessed clients' beneficiary nomination forms. The union yesterday published a copy of its open letter to NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn, which it is asking up to 1500 people employed in the bank's financial planning arm to counter-sign. In the letter addressed to "Andrew", FSU official Darren Martin asserts that it was "customary" practice for staff to sign the nomination forms in their offices and not always in the presence of advice clients. "Unfortunately the systems, processes and procedures were not in place to identify this issue and to prevent its reoccurrence," Martin states in the letter. An internal NAB investigation identified the potential breaches earlier this year when it found cases of staff witnessing beneficiary nomination forms without clients being present. Most superannuation fund trustees, including those associated with NAB's wealth management business, require clients to be present when staff legally witness sensitive documents such as beneficiary forms. While NAB declined to comment on the contents of the union's letter, a spokesperson said customers were the bank's top priority. " Our customers are our number one priority, and ensuring their beneficiary nomination forms have been completed in line with the requirements of superannuation fund trustees is a paramount," the spokesperson said. "As NAB has always said, where we find issues, we will work with our people to understand what has happened so we can fix these issues and improve our systems and processes to prevent them from re-occurring." FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said the union's members had lost confidence in NAB and other banks to conduct internal investigations of their wealth management and advice arms. "Our members are saying to us they've lost faith in their employers to get these investigations right," she told Banking Day. Angrisano confirmed that the union had not requested a meeting with Thorburn before the contents of the open letter were made public on Monday. The bank's spokesperson refused to comment on specific matters raised in the letter, including the claims there had not been a policy or procedure in place to guide staff on how to appropriately witness beneficiary nominations. NAB's counter to this assertion will likely rest on instructions printed on the forms that staff should witness nomination forms in the presence of clients. In a statement circulated to news media on Monday, the FSU claims its members always viewed the practice of witnessing beneficiary statements at their desks as "normal". "From the outset FSU members have reported that it was normal practice to bring forms back to the office for signing by the secondary witness," the union said. "It's what they were taught through the on-the-job training they received, it was never identified as an issue in quality checks,