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As part of a move to implement the banking industry initiatives package announced by the Australian Bankers’ Association in April 2016, the Commonwealth Bank is introducing a customer advocate function.
The new function will be headed by CBA's executive general manager for customer advocacy and remediation, Brendan French (who prior to taking on that role ran the bank's Open Advice Review program). The function has three key areas of focus: driving fair customer outcomes; looking for potential customer concerns and proactively removing or minimising their effects; and remediation.
CBA group executive for marketing and strategy, Vittoria Shortt, to whom Mr French will report, said the new function will work with government, industry, customer groups and internally to improve customer experience.
“This function will ensure we have an even stronger focus on the entire customer experience; it will improve accountability in decision making and ensure that the balance between customer outcomes and business outcomes is fair,” Ms Shortt said.
The initiative is intended, over time, to “improve products, processes, systems and decision making” as they relate to customers and ensure outcomes are “consistently fair”.
“We know that many of the most important decisions our customers can make are made in partnership with us – buying a house, insuring their lives and protecting their family – and we take that responsibility seriously,” Ms Shortt said.
[Related: Third-party a 'critical channel' for home loans, says CBA]