ADVERSE PUBLICITY NOTICE
Ordered by the Federal Court of Australia
The Federal Court of Australia has ordered National Australia Bank Limited (NAB) and its wholly owned subsidiary AFSH Nominees Pty Ltd (AFSH) to publish this adverse publicity notice.
On 13 August 2025, Justice Neskovcin of the Federal Court ordered NAB and AFSH to pay penalties totalling $15.5 million to the Commonwealth for failing to provide written response notices to customers’ hardship notices within the required time frame between November 2018 and October 2023.
The failures by NAB and AFSH to provide written response notices concerned 282 hardship notices given by NAB customers and 63 hardship notices given by AFSH customers, being notices that those customers considered they were, or would be, unable to meet their obligations under a credit contract. The Court found that these failures by NAB and AFSH constituted breaches of section 72(4) of the National Credit Code, being Schedule 1 to the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth). The Court ordered that NAB pay a penalty of $13 million, and AFSH pay a penalty of $2.5 million.
The failures resulted (with a few limited exceptions) from the incorrect use by NAB staff of a particular functionality in its internal system used to manage hardship notices. The causes have since been identified and NAB has taken steps to address those causes.
Since ASIC commenced court proceedings, NAB and ASFH have provided affected customers with a response to their hardship notice and conducted a remediation program which included remediation payments and the correction of repayment history information for some affected customers.
Further information
• Statement of facts agreed between the parties;
• Supplementary statement of facts agreed between the parties (regarding penalty);
• Justice Neskovcin’s judgment; and
• ASIC media release.
