Victims slam CBA pay rises
The Commonwealth Bank has been criticised for rewarding the executives of its troubled financial planning division with multimillion-dollar pay packets.
A Senate inquiry into the bank’s financial planning division called for a royal commission following allegations of fraud and forgery by rogue traders, with some victims losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• CBA boss’s pay rises to $8.1m
• CBA boss ‘sorry’ for financial scandal
Despite running the division between 2006 and 2011 when rogue traders were employed, Head of Business Banking Grahame Petersen received a pay rise of $1.1 million, taking his salary to $5.6 million before his retirement this month, according to a Fairfax report.
Annabel Spring, who replaced Mr Petersen as the head of financial advice, also received a pay rise of $900,000.
Jan Braund, a victim of one of eight CBA financial planners who provided dodgy financial advice to customers, told Fairfax that the bonuses were ‘devastating’.
“These are the people who are supposed to look after the little people who collectively made that bank wealthy, they are the ones reaping the rewards and it has taken this amount of time for them to even think of the little people,” said Ms Braund.
The bank, which has paid hundreds of clients more than $20 million in compensation, last week announced a record profit of $8.68 billion.