Ms Derville Rowland:

We have been clear that the customers were not interviewed. The purpose of the report was to identify the cultures that were in existence inside each of the lenders. There was a particular focus on the senior executive team precisely because what the Senator has said is correct, that they are so important in leading the culture, attitudes and tone from the top that the rest of the employees will follow. To understand their motivations, value set and mindset was the focus of the culture report. As Mr. Sibley and the Governor have said, we were aware that there was a significant cultural and behavioural deficit in the way they behaved towards their customers.

The report was to focus on how, at senior levels, the bank values the trade-offs in decisions between, for example, income from a particular initiative regarding a variety of things such as new products or market share and how the customer is valued within that. A team of leading world experts in cultural evaluation from our colleagues in the Dutch central bank came here to work with our team. We took a blended approach to their established model to examine the mindset, behaviours and the group behaviours in the organisation. We blended it with our own behaviours-----