National Australia Bank's leadership used their opening speeches to try to set a calmer tone for the bank's AGM in Sydney yesterday. They were only partially successful - with the mood only slightly less strident than at Westpac's AGM last week, following news that ASIC is taking action over fees for no service yet again.Phil Chronican, who had stepped in as interim CEO of NAB nine months ago, faced up to his first annual general meeting as chairman. Meanwhile, NAB's new chief executive officer, Ross McEwan had a tough re-introduction into the local industry.Inevitably Chronican had to acknowledge the fallout from the Hayne royal commission: "We will not let time dull the impact of the royal commission, nor will we gloss over its findings," he said.Chronican focused on weaknesses in compliance and culture disclosed by internal reviews: "Our approach to managing compliance and conduct risk was not sufficiently robust or effective [and]... leaders weren't always as clear as they should have been on who was accountable for complex issues across the bank."The NAB Board "was not always as inquiring, challenging and demanding of management as we should have been."  Chronican reiterated the changed structure and assessment of NAB's executive remuneration with the board set "to apply greater rigour and oversight" regarding executive performance assessments."As a first tangible step in this direction, significant amounts of unvested variable rewards from 2016, 2017 and 2018 were forfeited for the majority of the 2018 executive leadership team," he said.  For the current year, there will be no short-term variable rewards and no fixed remuneration increases for our current Group Executives.  "We have also implemented a new remuneration framework which includes an appropriately hurdled long-term variable reward," Chronican said.  He then tried to set up a positive tone: "Since June 2018, we have returned $276 million to customers through approximately 503,000 separate payments," Chronican said. And then there are NAB's claims to be the sustainability bank: "We acknowledge that climate change is increasingly important to the community and recognise opportunities for NAB and our customers in the transition to a low-carbon economy.  "We have committed $2 billion in financing to drive innovation in the emerging technology sector and a further $2 billion to support social and affordable housing in Australia.""We committed to continuing to be Australia's largest arranger of renewable energy finance and in mid-November we increased our environmental financing target from $55 billion to $70 billion by 2025."Since 2015, NAB has provided nearly $34 billion of this commitment.  Chronican also sought to pre-empt the anti-fossil fuel activism seen at recent AGMs, talking of NAB's decision to cap its exposure to thermal coal mining at current levels and not to take on new-to-bank thermal coal mining customers.   Thermal coal mining currently represents seven percent of NAB's total resources portfolio credit exposure.   "We will halve our financing to thermal coal mining by 2028 and intend to be effectively at zero by 2035, apart from residual guarantees to rehabilitate existing coal assets," he said.  Thermal coal mining