NAB Wealth customers get advocate

Aggrieved NAB Wealth customers will now have access to a law professor to hear their complaints, with the bank appointing Professor Dimity Kingsford Smith from the University of NSW as an independent customer advocate.

With the establishment of the new role NAB hopes to build independence into its advice complaints process.

NAB's wealth division has been under the spotlight recently, with the bank confessing that it has paid out millions of dollars to around 750 customers over five years because of bad advice from NAB Wealth.

As customer advocate, Professor Kingsford Smith will have the authority to support customers through to the resolution of a complaint.

If there is a disagreement over a complaint outcome, the customer advocate can escalate the concern to the lead independent director of the NAB Wealth Board, who also sits on the NAB Principal Board.

Andrew Thorburn, NAB's chief executive officer, said "the customer advocate role has been designed to challenge us in a meaningful way, to hold us to account, and to support our customers through the resolution of complaints in our financial advice complaints process."

Professor Kingsford Smith is a member of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission External Advisory Panel. From 2007 to 2014 she was the independent chair of the Conduct Review Commission, a professional disciplinary panel in the financial services industry.