August 26, 2018 2:00pm by David Farrar

The benefits of more than one owner

Kiwibank’s shareholders could be headed for court, with the Super Fund and ACC filing legal notices to NZ Post over troubles in the state-owned bank’s IT systems.

The Guardians of NZ Super and ACC and understood to have filed a notice of claim with NZ Post, alleging NZ Post breached its obligations by failing to make available information which would have disclosed risks with a major upgrade of Kiwibank’s core IT systems, known as CoreMod.

By bringing in NZSF and ACC as shareholders, it has meant the company now has obligation disclosures. This is a good thing, as problems can’t be swept under the carpet.

Problems with the Kiwibank IT upgrade have been slowly unfolding, however the scale of the issues were made clearer in September 2017 when it wrote $90m off the value of its investment in the project.

At the time Kiwibank’s then chief executive, Paul Brock, appeared to blame changing customer preferences, as he announced a strategic review of the project.

Blaming the customers is rarely a good strategy.