Posted: 2019-07-19 14:43:50

"Certainly we need to continue on with that plan we’ve committed to. Money has been set aside to work with that transformation and again when I get here we’ll have a look with the executive team whether it is fast enough," Mr McEwan said.

"There are some things that need repairing and one of the reasons I’m here is I find strength in those sort of challenges for a bank and I think we can repair the things that went wrong with this bank over the next few years."

Mr McEwan also said he had "never been a fan" of quarterly reporting, saying there was too much pressure on banks to report "constant improvement" every quarter.

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"We've got to be very careful that you don't damage a bank and particularly its relationship with its customers because you want to eke out every quarter something better than the quarter before, and I'm suggesting that is one of the attributes of how the industry got itself into some of the difficulties that it had."

UBS analyst Jonathan Mott said he expected Mr McEwan to speed up NAB's transformation once he takes the top job.

"We believe NAB's restructuring initiatives are likely to accelerate once he starts in 2020 and are centred around the customer," Mr Mott said.

"We do not expect a simple continuation of NAB's current strategy."

Mr Mott said NAB has had a challenging period and has underperformed its peers for the last 20 years.

"We believe there is a lot of work to do to turn NAB around which is very likely to have a drag on shareholder returns." He added that UBS saw Mr McEwan's appointment as a "big" step in the right direction.

We believe there is a lot of work to do to turn NAB around which is very likely to have a drag on shareholder returns.

UBS analyst Jonathan Mott.

Andrew Martin, principal of Alphinity a fund manager that holds NAB shares, welcomed Mr McEwan's appointment and said he would support an increased transformation project "for the right reasons".

"There's two reasons you take a provision or a write-down, one is to make your earnings growth look better going forward, and the other is to make a fundamental change in the business that is going to make the bank more sustainable and ultimately have better returns longer term.

"Certainly we would support the second one, particularly given the environment in Australia - obviously there is the political and regulatory environment but there's also the economic reality around low rates, around slow housing market and falling prices.

"All of the banks are in a position where they need to do more."

Mr Martin also said there was a case for NAB to retain its wealth business but that depended on what direction Mr McEwan wanted the bank to take and whether the returns from running the wealth business outweighed the costs. "NAB customers will still want financial advice in some form," Mr Martin said.

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