Comyn Pins Blame on Predecessor for Junk Credit Card Insurance

(Bloomberg) -- Commonwealth Bank of Australia Chief Executive Officer Matt Comyn has pinned the blame on predecessor Ian Narev for failing to stop selling credit card insurance that some customers couldn’t claim on.

Narev told Comyn to “temper your sense of justice” when he suggested at a meeting in May 2015 that the bank scrap the product, the CEO said Tuesday during his second day of testimony at an inquiry into misconduct in the financial system. At the time of the meeting, Comyn was in charge of retail banking.

It was later revealed the insurance had been wrongly sold to 64,000 customers who were ineligible to make claims, because they didn’t meet the employment criteria of the policy.

The Sydney-based lender set aside A$16 million ($11.7 million) to compensate customers just before Comyn replaced Narev in April.

To contact the reporter on this story: Emily Cadman in Sydney at ecadman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe

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