NAB group chief executive Ross McEwan, along with chief risk officer Shaun Dooley, fronted the Federal House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics on Friday.
In contrast with his mood six months ago, McEwan was upbeat on current business conditions and the outlook for the next year.
National Australia Bank has long claimed to be the county's biggest business bank, and its CEO aimed to press his case on that. McEwan told the committee that business loan applications totalling at least A$2.5 billion per month were rolling in, sometimes at a rate of $3 billion per month.
This is slightly up on pre-COVID activity: "[Loans for] tractors are up 140 per cent, irrigation equipment up 217 per cent, earthmoving up 133 per cent, forklifts up 216 per cent – all productive activities," McEwan said, adding NAB had also seen a 155 per cent increase in Australian businesses buying coffee machines, which he said was an indication Australians were getting back to work.
The positive outlook is also reflected in NAB's mortgage book, with 98 per cent of customers no longer on deferral. McEwan said between 94 and 95 per cent were now on full repayment. The remainder (around 11,000 customers) have been moved onto hardship arrangements, and 70 per cent of them are able to make partial repayments.
"The original amount outstanding was around $58 billion from 130,000 customers. It's now down to close to $1 billion on deferral," McEwan said.
He assured the MPs that no-one would be forced into default "for many months yet".
Of the NAB customers still in distress following the cessation of repayment deferrals, 67 per cent are investors, and Dooley estimated that the number who cannot be contacted by NABassist to re-arrange their loans at "less than 1000".
NAB's business book is faring even better: "We haven't seen any businesses moved into distressed debt – from a peak of $15 billion in deferral we're now down to around $100 million [SME loans] … in trouble," McEwan said.
Cyber security is another area of concern for the committee members. McEwan told the MPs NAB spent $320 million in recent years to set up systems to defend against cyberattacks.
When asked for more details, NAB's CRO Dooley said that there had been 100 million attempts per month, a number that shocked the committee.
Other notable points to emerge included• NAB now has 596 branches, as at the end of March, down from 657 in 2018 – about 60 branch closures over the last three years;• there were 80 branches that were temporarily closed because of Covid and of these, 78 of been reopened; and• at the end of February there were 899 NAB branded ATMs, with 52 being closed in the last year.
Deputy chair Andrew Leigh challenged McEwan to rule out the possibility that NAB would either tilt at an acquisition of Suncorp or make a play for Citibank's Australian business – notably its credit card operations, which are the fifth largest in the country.
McEwan said: "I am going to disappoint the committee… and not answer that