NAB spruiks green credentials, plays down AML concerns
It was a return to business as usual at National Australia Bank's 2017 annual general meeting last Friday. "We have real momentum in executing our strategy, with total shareholder return the best amongst our peers across one, three and five year measures. We are now competitive with our peers on return on equity, having worked over the past three years to close the gap," NAB chairman Ken Henry told shareholders."We aspire to have the highest return on equity of the major banks."CEO Andrew Thorburn was keen to spruik the finance NAB was offering to projects supporting an orderly transition to a low-carbon economy and protecting environmental amenities."We have expanded our environmental financing commitment to A$55 billion by 2025. We are also committing to source 50 per cent of NAB's Australian electricity demand from renewable energy projects by 2025," Thorburn said. Last week NAB also said that it would no longer finance new thermal coal mining projects, although the bank will continue to support its existing customers across the mining and energy sectors. "The world's transition to a low carbon future will necessarily feature less reliance on thermal coal, and we accept responsibility for the role we will play in this transition," Thorburn said.Earlier, NAB chairman Ken Henry broached the subject of the bank's fleet of ATMs: "With regard to Intelligent Deposit Machines, Austrac has advised us they have no issues with our approach. On the basis of the information available to us, we have no reason to expect we have any material issues with Austrac or in meeting our obligations under the relevant legislation."Shareholders will have noted that in our full year results and annual reporting suite we took a conservative approach and included in our contingent liabilities note reference to several AML matters. We did this because of heightened market and public interest in this topic."In a brief media interruption, Thorburn waved away any follow up question on the likelihood of further action [against NAB for ATM] by Austrac."We have monitoring, we have supervision, we have oversight. We are investing a lot more money - we want to protect our customers. We are having regular dialogue with Austrac, as we do with all regulators and we're meeting all our obligations with and to them."Thorburn said the bank was "having regular dialogue with Austrac", as it did with all regulators, and was meeting all its obligations. Asked when NAB became aware of the "weaknesses" in its 'Know Your Customer' processes, Thorburn simply replied: "look, I think this is … the annual review for the last year so obviously we are just reporting in the liabilities section what the current situation is."