NAB's trouble in UK

Shereel Patel
NAB's drawn-out strife in the UK pushed its charge for operational risks to a whopping A$1.54 billion last year.
 
Remediation of operational risks has consumed an increasing share of NAB's investment spend in recent years.

The bank allocated $296 million to this last year, up from $233 million last year.
 
NAB said charges to provide for operational risk event losses included "an additional provision in relation to UK payment protection insurances of $756 million and for interest rate hedging products (IRHP) of $654 million for the September 2014 full year."

NAB outlined most of these charges a month ago, along with a progress report on the run-off of its UK commercial real estate run-off portfolio, which the bank said "continues to decline" with the balance reducing by £1.1 billion over the six months to September 2014 to £2.2 billion.

While charges for bad and doubtful debts have eased, a trend the bank said was "consistent with steady improvements in the UK economy", overall revenue from its UK business remains "subdued".

"Strong growth in housing lending and higher margins ... from reduced funding and deposit costs [were] offset by lower business lending and weaker fee income," NAB stated in its ASX profit announcement.