New fee structure introduced early at NAB

National Australia Bank has implemented its pledge to abolish penalty fees from its personal bank accounts at least three weeks early.

In July NAB orchestrated a public relations campaign around the removal of most penalty fees on bank accounts and reaped as much media and political kudos as it could expect from that announcement (which Commonwealth and Westpac followed to an extent). The new fees were due to apply from July.

In an interview on ABC TV's Inside Business on Sunday, NAB's head of personal banking Lisa Gray mentioned that NAB had already stopped charging the penalty fees "a month earlier than we originally intended."

Yesterday, when The Sheet asked the NAB public relations unit for confirmation, no one knew what we were talking about. Late yesterday afternoon NAB issued a media statement confirming the new fee structure was in place.

Now NAB is forgoing a month's revenue from the current fee structure for no tangible benefit.