NAB is fast-tracking efforts to protect customers against rising fraud and scam volumes by accelerating a capability uplift in its financial crime function.
“We've got about 62 changes being made throughout the bank between now and May that will help our customers…because that's our primary concern," chief executive Ross McEwan told iTnews.
In the bank's 2023 half year results on Thursday, NAB walked through its progress so far which includes installing biometric technologies such as Biocatch, along with the use of machine learning, 24/7 account monitoring and customer education resources.
On the latter, it is focusing education efforts via its See Through Scams campaign and working with telcos to limit the ability of scammers to impersonate NAB phone numbers and messages.
Through interventions, NAB said it had prevented and recovered more than $155 million in scam losses for customers in the past 18 months.
NAB spent $43 million on its financial crime capability uplift and combating frauds and scams during the half.
It spent an additional $92 million on technology and related investments.
Speaking to investors, McEwan said the area of financial crime, scams and frauds is “of significant concern for everyone” and has “been incredibly stressful for the customers impacted and for our colleagues who have had to support them”.
“These are increasingly sophisticated criminals who will not stop trying to steal from our customers or our bank," he said.
“This is an important ongoing area of focus as we work with others across government, corporates and their communities to educate customers and implement tools that we can help keep our customers safe."
Refreshed strategy
McEwan added the bank is moving forward with a clear long-term strategic goal which is centred on delivering better outcomes for its staff and customers.
“Three years ago, we announced our 'refresh' group strategy. This is a long-term strategy. This is core to the actions we take every day across our business, as we consistently focus on delivering better outcomes for our customers and our colleagues regardless of the environment," he said.
“We will do this by being relationship-led and easy to do business with, while adopting a safe and long-term sustainable approach to managing our businesses.”
As the bank seeks to find and retain talent, McEwan noted it was "pleasing” to see “the actions we've taken in recent years to improve decision-making and accountabilities are being recognised in our colleague surveys”.
McEwan also reported its business and private banking franchise that’s based on a relationship-led business model “is increasingly being complemented by digital data and analytics capabilities”.
Its digital-first bank, UBank, which absorbed 86 400 to prop up its own digital capabilities, was identified as having "growth opportunities as part of our strategic refresh”, alongside growth prospects in unsecured lending.
NAB noted UBank enjoyed continued strong new customer acquisition in its target segment of under 35-year-olds.
It’s also progressed on 86 400 integration, with 75 percent of original customers now upgraded to the new platform.
Over the half, the bank's innovation and investment division, NAB Ventures, made three new investments and three further investments into portfolio companies.
Its investments include payment fintech Banked; settlement platform Carbonplace, which NAB already uses for its stablecoin; and environmentally-focused platform Greener.
The bank also said its investments towards simplifying, automating and digitising business and increasing its use of data and analytics are delivering better outcomes by allowing bankers to spend more time with customers and better self-service.
In FY23, NAB expects to deliver productivity benefits of approximately $400 million, which it noted will provide an important offset against short-term inflationary cost pressures.
The bank recorded a statutory net profit of $3.967 billion and cash earnings of $4.070 billion.
