ANZ's culture shock
ANZ’s brutal self-assessment lays bare a culture long resistant to challenge, with CEO Nuno Matos now pushing a hard reset on risk, leadership and accountability.
The dire diagnosis of ANZ's internal dynamics as complacent and resistant to challenge, delivered late on Friday, merely confirmed what we already knew: the bank's risk culture needs urgent repair.
You don’t get saddled with $1 billion in additional risk capital by APRA, settle for a record $240 million with ASIC and get done for misleading the Australian government in the space of two years if things are hunky dory.
“These findings aren’t a surprise,” one senior risk manager told this publication over the weekend, describing the experience of raising issues internally as being like “talking to a brick wall”.
Another seasoned ANZ manager describes clunky systems and a lack of capability in key areas, summing it up like this: “Risk work was seen as an impediment to operational success, and so was often ignored”.
