Suncorp Metway was "very close" to a bank run at the height of the financial crisis, in 2008, the bank's former managing director, John Mulcahy, told the
Sunday Mail.
The newspaper reported the comments in a feature taking a look at the introduction into Australia of a guarantee on bank deposits five years ago.
The Sunday Mail reported on an October 2008 briefing from the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, which said that before the guarantee some regional and smaller institutions were seeing "outflows to the major banks".
The guarantee reversed this trend.
Suncorp has alluded to the near run
before, one of the few banks to show any transparency (well after the event) concerning an unstable period in banking.
In its 2009 shareholder review, Suncorp noted as one of the "events of 2008/09 that Suncorp Bank experienced deposit outflows in September as investors shifted funds from regional banks and credit unions to AA-rated banks."