Local news for local people
Goodbye NAB. It was almost nice knowing you
April 25. 2024
On Monday, April 8, Oberon Matters received the following email from the new CEO of banking giant NAB.
How NAB is focused on customers
Hi Peter,
Thank you for banking with National Australia Bank (NAB).
I want to introduce myself as your new NAB Group Chief Executive Officer and share how we continue to support customers.
This is an exciting opportunity and I am honoured to lead NAB, a bank that for 160 years has been supporting the financial needs of so many Australians. I'm proud to continue that work and acknowledge my responsibility to you as a customer, as well as our 38,000 colleagues.
During more than 20 years in banking I've learned that delivering the best experience for customers should be at the heart of why we come to work each day.
To achieve this, everyone at NAB is focused on continuing to modernise our bank and become simpler and better.
We also want to help our communities prosper. Our ambition is to help you grow financially, whether you are buying a home, building a business or making ideas flourish.
Relationships are at the core of NAB. I have seen the importance of this when meeting and listening to customers and colleagues right across Australia since joining the bank in 2021.
There are some areas we are doing well and some where we need to improve. I will continue to listen to your feedback and take action to make this bank better.
Apart from the familiarity of the CEO of a major Australian company addressing a customer with "Hi", note the highlighted words. The email was sent 15 days before the community of Oberon had to prosper without an NAB branch,
Two days after the branch closure and NAB can't
even be bothered putting up a sign
to tell the customers where to
go next.
Federal Member for Calare, Andrew Gee MP, issued the following media release
MEDIA RELEASE
23 April 2024
NAB'S COUNTRY BANK BRANCH CULL: OBERON AND LITHGOW AMONG 11 TOWNS LOSING NAB BRANCHES BY JULY
GEE: "IT'S A DISGRACEFUL BETRAYAL"
This week, National Australia Bank (NAB) customers in Oberon and Lithgow will be forced to make a round trip of more than one hundred kilometres for face-to-face banking, with NAB abandoning its two local branches.
Today is the last day NAB customers in Oberon will be able to conduct in-person banking in town, while NAB Lithgow will be closing tomorrow.
The Central West branches are among 11 regional branches being axed by NAB before the end of the financial year, including Cessnock, Moruya, Mullumbimby, Yass, Pittsworth, Proserpine, Sarina, Jamestown and Bright.
Independent Federal Member for Calare, Andrew Gee, said the regional bank closures come at a time of sky-high profits.
"In November 2023, NAB posted a profit of $7.731 billion," said Mr Gee.
"Former NAB CEO Ross McEwan said at the time, 'NAB is focused on delivering better outcomes for our customers and colleagues… and this is serving our customers and our bank well.'
"I think he mistook the word 'customers' for 'shareholders', because just two months later, NAB announced it would be axing its Oberon and Lithgow shopfronts - two of 11 regional NAB branches to close by July.
"That eyewatering $7.7 billion profit was made possible by shutting branches in country areas that have supported the bank through the generations and made the bank what it is today.
"The big banks say that they're closing branches because fewer people are using them, but we all know the truth; they believe that they can make even greater profits by shutting them down.
"They downgrade services at branches and then walk away from the very communities who built them, disgracefully betraying the trust of loyal and longstanding country customers. Devastatingly for people in the regions, it just keeps on going.
"To access face-to-face banking, NAB customers in Oberon will now be forced to complete a 90km to 100km round trip to Bathurst, while NAB customers in Lithgow must make an approximately 80km to 90km round trip to the Katoomba branch, or head to Bathurst which is a round trip of about 125km.
"These bank closures are particularly hard on seniors, community groups and businesses who rely on in-person banking services.
"In February, I met with NAB representatives at Parliament House in Canberra and asked them to reverse their decision to axe their Lithgow and Oberon branches. They flat out refused.
"The only thing the big banks fear is government regulation and that's why the Australian Government needs to get on with legislating minimum service requirements for banks in country areas.
"This is another sorry chapter in the shameful story of the big banks' abandonment and betrayal of country Australia and their customers," said Mr Gee.
The Hon Andrew Gee MP
Independent Federal Member for Calare
Media contact: Sinead Fogarty -
See a letter from a resident and NAB customer here.
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