Tucker’s departure a “mutual decision”
The departure of Steve Tucker as head of MLC was a mutual decision, according to National Australia Bank (NAB) chief executive Cameron Clyne, who told a press conference in Sydney that he is confident in the new leadership of the bank's wealth business.
"It was time for a change and a natural process of giving a fresh perspective on a business," Clyne said.
In a number of management changes, NAB announced yesterday morning that Andrew Hagger - currently group executive of people, marketing and communications - will take over as group executive of NAB Wealth as Steve Tucker leaves the company after 25 years.
Clyne said he is confident the new leadership would take NAB's wealth unit forward.
"The wealth industry as a whole has been going through a lot of change," he said. "I think we see that the business is well positioned - there's obviously opportunities to improve that performance and we're confident the new leadership can do that."
Clyne also added the bank was planning to make a more aggressive push into the self-managed super fund (SMSF) market.
The announcements came as part of a broader strategy update, which would see the bank complete its technology overhaul and upgrade its customer management systems in order to cut costs in the long term.
There will be "simpler and fewer products, less complexity in our technology and more centralisation in operations and support functions," the bank announced.
Clyne added NAB would not be engaging in large-scale job cuts.
"We expect the staff numbers will change, they've been changing over the last couple of years but by and large we've achieved the bulk of that through attrition and we're looking for a sensible way to achieve it," he said. "We've got a workforce of some 26,000 - there's a lot of change that goes on in any one unit, we've achieved it in a fairly low-key fashion in the past and there's no suggestion we can't do that in the future."
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