Andrew Thorburn, the CEO of National Australia Bank, has told the Australian Banking Royal Commission that misconduct at his bank has led to 300 dismissals, with a further 700 people facing pay cuts and other types of punishment.

Thorburn, who was paid $4.065 million after bonuses last year, said that “it’s been a difficult and shameful year.” He admitted that the dismissals were a consequence of the "appalling behaviour" that the Royal Commission - and an internal probe of 1,200 people - had uncovered. He expressed sorrow at the fact that NAB's customers had lost faith in it, blaming an excessive emphasis on bonuses and product sales. The bank has 33,000 staff in Australia.

He said that when he entered banking he was taught that banks had to serve customers' needs but that they had "drifted away" from that in the 1990s.

Early last month, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission began to take civil action in the Federal Court of Australia against two entities in NAB’s wealth management division, NULIS Nominees (Australia) Ltd and MLC Nominees Pty Ltd in relation to fees charged by both entities to a significant number of their superannuation members for services not provided.

ASIC alleges that NULIS and MLC Nominees (as the current and former superannuation trustee of NAB) misled members of MLC MasterKey Super products. It wants the court to impose declarations of contravention and a civil penalty.

In August Kenneth Hayne, the commissioner, scotched NAB's attempt to keep a letter that the bank and NULIS Nominees wrote to ASIC in 2016 in which they beseeched it not to pursue an enforceable undertaking (an Australian equivalent of a US cease-and-desist court order) in the courts.