What Cameron Clyne is doing now (it involves AI and bad bank culture)

afr.com:

Former National Australia Bank chief executive Cameron Clyne has re-emerged in the banking sector, investing in and advising a start-up, Swarm Dynamics. It makes artificial intelligence-powered software to help banks identify and resolve their cultural problems.

Since he departed NAB as CEO in August 2014, NAB has had a few.

Mr Clyne passed the baton to Andrew Thorburn, who was dragged through the coals of the Hayne royal commission. This triggered his departure, along with chairman Ken Henry in 2019. Both were singled out by Kenneth Hayne, in his final report, for not learning the “lessons of the past”.

Former NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne is advising a start-up supplying compliance software to banks. Janie Barrett

Now, Mr Clyne is helping develop software for banks, so they can improve regulatory compliance. It combines behavioural science, social network analysis and AI, using them to measure bank team dynamics and staff psychology by scanning metadata on internal communications.

Swarm, on whose advisory board Mr Clyne sits, is already supplying its system to one major Australian bank (not NAB, but he would not confirm the name) and three global banks.

The software builds networks of human collaboration. This helps banks understand cultural risk, by showing managers who is talking to whom. It can be used by banks to show they are meeting expectations under “enforceable undertakings” with regulators.

NAB entered an enforceable undertaking with AUSTRAC last year to improve its systems to ensure compliance with anti-money laundering laws. This came after separate problems at the royal commission, which found the bank had not accepted “the necessary responsibility for deciding, for itself, what is the right thing to