No data, no records box in NAB
National Australia Bank "could not have opened the door any wider," to clarifying the no fees for no service matter with ASIC, the bank's chief customer officer Andrew Hagger pleaded with the banking royal commission yesterday.Recalled to amplify the evidence of his associates on this topic last week, Hagger sparred with Michael Hodge, counsel assisting, over the bank's drawn out resolution of the compensation owed to more than 40,000 superannuation customers for fees wrongly charged some years ago.Hodge put it to Hagger that ASIC "noted that completion [by the bank] of the 'fees for no service' review by the end of 2017 is two and a half years after ASIC first asked for the work to start."Yes, Hagger agreed. Hodge asked: "NAB has also recently admitted to ASIC that on 84 occasions between 2014 and 2017 it failed to provide a significant breach notice within ten business days of becoming aware of the breach. Are you aware of that?""I knew there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed, and breach reporting was one of them," Hagger said, speaking of his C-suite job shift in April 2013 as group executive for wealth at the bank."Through a project called Project Sunrise, we invested a lot of money in improving processes under ASIC's watch, and they saw the improvements that we made … and our breach reporting data in recent times has been … not perfect, but a substantial improvement on where it was."Hodge continued: "What do you think that period of delay says about the culture of NAB Wealth?""From a delay perspective - I will use that word - we had tough discussions with ASIC, and from a cultural perspective, it shows that there were some things that we were holding dear which ASIC did not hold dear, for example, the role of customers in the methodology [for working out refunds]," Hagger said. Hodge put it to Hagger that "NAB didn't want to review whether it had actually provided the agreed annual review in every year?"ASIC, Hagger admitted "were not happy that .. we had no digital data, no physical records."We have a cohort without digital records, and, of course, remembering this goes back to 2009, so there's a lot of things in boxes. "Once we had gone through those records, we would then go to the adviser, and then if neither of those two demonstrated service with assurance, we would go to the customer. And if the customer said there hasn't been service, we would refund the fees."Hagger elaborated: "What we said, which ASIC didn't like … was that if we didn't hear from customers, we would assume they were happy … and we wanted to build that into our program."NAB did turn over "some receipt data, which was digital data," Hagger said."So, what we said was, we need to find more evidence here of what has actually happened, physical evidence, discussions with advisers, discussions with customers. "And what [ASIC] were talking about, at one end of the