NAB and Westpac Recommendations and Commentary on Culture

Chapter 31 of the Stage 2 Key Code and Advanced Handbook for the governance of Australian major banks examines the NAB and Westpac recommendations and commentary on culture. This begins with an examination of NAB’s five cultural inhibitors to targeted culture including a discussion of values, behaviours, cultural ‘levers’ and measuring risk culture. NAB’s cultural inhibitor 1 is rigour and discipline. Cultural inhibitor 2 is over-reliance on people for deficiencies in systems and processes. There follows cultural inhibitor 3 – failure of collective intensity or individual resolve to fix complex issues. Cultural inhibitor 4 is failure to listen and learn from customers, regulators and employees and concluding cultural inhibitor 5 is other priorities put before commitment to customers. We then move to Westpac’s findings and commentary on culture of which there are 9 findings examined in this Chapter: vision, values and strategy; management of non-financial risks; caring, relationship-focus and collaboration; collective decision-making and diffused accountability; completeness and organisational complexity; speaking-up and challenge; prioritising, making decisions and saying “no”; conceptualisation and process over outcome; and institutional learning and reflection. We conclude with the Westpac Reassessment findings on risk culture.