Well, I just wasted a couple of minutes reading and trying to understand the point of this thread!!
I am sure we would all be happy to see a reduction in wage costs, however broad statements about reducing certain levels is just simplistic headline grabs. Also, not sure of the logic about the CEO pay - pretty sure we can make others (on less money) also take responsibility. But of course we all know the "market" (or perhaps the boys club) dictates what the big end of town deserve
It is also surely plainly evident to everyone that during Covid, NAB (along with all the others) have already accelerated the rationalisation of branches either through reduced hours or closure!!
As for outsourcing business lending to brokers
One of Nab's success has been in the small business segment due to having specialist lenders available (not saying it is perfect but at least they have some expertise at local level)
Outsourcing to brokers just commoditises the whole deal and makes it a total numbers game (we already know there is enough of that) just like Home loans.
The broker genie is out of the bottle with home lending and banks would love to reign it in (due to ongoing costs), but the broker industry has been successful in marketing a totally false caring and supportive image, while pumping out as much as they can and filling agreed quotas to ensure good "relationships"!
Small business lending often requires far greater personal risk analysis than the flick and tick numbers game.
If you have a decent business proposal much better to talk direct to whoever is responsible for approval, monitoring and ongoing maintenance. Plenty of riskier business deals go through brokers in the hope of approval due to the brokers relationship with the lender - often not helpful in the long run to a business, due to limited advice and push to approve regardless of what's best for the client in the long run. We don't need a further push from the commission driven, approve at all cost mentality- plenty out there now usually hawking around hyped up deals!!
(20min delay)