Updated statement 1pm 23 January 2017
NAB has confirmed that all migrant banking emails sent to an incorrect email address have been secured and deleted.
We will be communicating with migrant banking customers involved in the error to advise them of this action and to reiterate we have found no misuse of emails.
This error did not impact any customers who set up an account in Australia.
Updated at 1:00pm; 9 January 2017
Statement from Peter Coad, NAB Executive General Manager, International Branches:
As we have said previously, we have been, and continue to, take action to ensure this group of migrant banking customers’ accounts are secure.
Although this has been a complex process involving multiple international jurisdictions, all parties – including the email account owner – are taking this extremely seriously and NAB is working hard to resolve this matter for our migrant banking customers as soon as possible.
From our productive and helpful discussions with the email account owner, we understand that the email address to which the correspondence was incorrectly sent, is not actively used and our customers’ emails have not been wrongfully used. We are confident that there has been no unusual activity associated with these migrant banking accounts and we continue to monitor 24/7.
We take full responsibility and have apologised to our migrant banking customers and assure them that we are working hard to improve and strengthen our processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
16 December 2016
Statement from NAB Executive General Manager International Branches Peter Coad
NAB has written to customers who migrated to Australia, regarding accounts they established through the bank’s migrant banking team while they resided overseas.
In this letter, NAB notified these customers that an email confirming their account had been established was also sent in error to an incorrect email address.
This error does not impact customers who set up an account in Australia.
Our number one priority was to notify our customers.
The email included customer information such as a name, address, email address, BSB and account number and in some cases NAB identification number – but it did not include any passwords.
We take the privacy and the protection of our customers’ personal information extremely seriously.
We also take full responsibility and we sincerely apologise to our customers for this mistake.
The error was caused by human error and identified following our own internal checks and as soon as we realised what had happened we took action.
We have reviewed these customers’ accounts, over and above our rigorous normal checks, and have not identified any unusual activity. We will continue to monitor 24/7 to protect our customers’ accounts.
We are reaching out to approximately 60,000 migrant banking customers to notify them about this error.
Approximately 40 per cent of these customers have either closed or have not used their account this year.
Furthermore, 19,000 of these accounts have a balance of less than $2.
We have also notified and are working with industry regulators, including the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and ASIC.
We do not consider that customers need to take any action with their account.
If customers have further questions, please call our customer contact centre on 13 66 22. International customers please call +61 3 8641 9083.
We are sorry for this error and we will continue to work hard to improve and strengthen our processes.
For media enquiries please call NAB media line on +61 3 8641 0180.
