National Australia Bank Ltd. has taken a huge hit on its Integrated Systems Implementation (ISI) project. The bank has written off A$200 million (US$154 million) against the project, part of a A$409 million software asset write-down.

Its New Zealand subsidiary, the Bank of New Zealand, has worn NZ$78 million of the write-down.

Two years ago, the Australian Financial Review reported that NAB had spent upwards of A$1 billion on the SAP project, which has been rolled out through Australia, New Zealand and Europe. New Zealand was used as a test-bed for the project, which embraces human resources, financials and procurement.

NAB disclosed a 20 percent drop in profit in its annual results, posted last week. Its European operations? earnings fell by 33.3 percent, but the BNZ?s profit was up 6.6 percent.

NAB was also hit during the year by a rogue foreign exchange scandal, which cost it A$360 million.

As part of a management shake-up in September, NAB replaced its Australian chief information officer, Ian Crouch, with its executive general manager of financial services Australia, Ian MacDonald. NAB also lost its CIO in Europe.