(03) 9020 2905It sounds about as credible as a Tiger Woods sermon on chastity or David Hasselhoff writing a how-to handbook on sobriety.
Or maybe it’s more like the wolf dressed up as grandma in “Little Red Riding Hood”. You know, so smugly dishonest that you can see the animal that wants to eat you alive drooling.
But there it is. They’re apparently serious. They don’t even see the irony!
National Australia Bank wants to reinvent itself as your mate, the cut-price bank. Bank with them and they’ll shout your first beer every Friday night with the savings you make.
If you’re a good customer – that is, your loans are HUGE – they might buy your first couple of beers at the pub every week.
NAB’s latest pitch is to “allow” credit card holders to pay off the debt that is incurring the highest interest rate first. This, incredibly, reverses standard operating procedure for banks.
That’s a lark. It would appear to have been a great big inside joke for the banking community for years.
Forget the Nigerians and their letters! THIS is a great scam! I should have done this with my brother when he was desperate for cash. “It’s okay, mum, banks do it this way.”
Changing the arrangement will cost NAB millions each year. And the cheeky buggers, after fleecing customers for 35 years, are even calling on their competitors to match them!
For 12 months, NAB has been selling itself as a different story, with the lowest standard variable home loan of the Big Four and, they claim, continuing to lend to small business while competitors turned off the taps.
NAB is trying to steal from Sir Richard Branson’s playbook.
Branson has made squillions entering into markets of large, highly profitable and comfortable rivals. Inevitably, he’s championed Brand Virgin as the consumer’s larrakin mate. He gives the air that he throws away the establishment’s rulebooks and redesigns things the way that customers want them.
He doesn’t really do that. But it’s bloody clever marketing.
Sadly, NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne couldn’t do the whole product launch on a jetski with chickybabes in red bikinis thing. I’d offer, but bikinis don’t suit my figure. Which is, you know, fat.
NAB wants to champion itself as the best banking mate a consumer ever had. In doing so, hopefully you’ll come flocking, bringing your mates, and forgetting all the grief NAB has caused you over so many years.
Well, NAB, if you really want to emulate Virgin’s far-from-perfect Chief Dude, take another leaf out of his book. Apologise, like Sir Richard did (while sunning himself at the Singapore Grand Prix) for the whole Virgin Blue bookings shenanigans.
NAB, say sorry for ripping consumers off for so many years on credit cards. Why didn’t you do this years ago? Why are you doing this now?
Call me a cynic. Because that’s what I am. But rival ANZ spilled the beans on what’s really behind NAB’s newfound generosity. They’re getting in early to beat the Labor Government enacting legislation.
Don’t forget the “exception fee” debacle. A year ago, the banks began dropping their exception fees – those rip-offs charged in lots of $25-$50 on overdrawn accounts.
Did that have anything to do with the fact that British consumers had just taken the banks to the cleaners in the courts for billions of pounds over exception fees? And Australian customers were likely to launch the same class actions here in Australia?
No? Awwww, come on!
But there’s someone else NAB needs to apologise to. Their long-suffering shareholders.
Do you know what the real problem with NAB going down the cut-price path is? They were NO BLOODY GOOD at making money when they were ripping customers off!
From a shareholder’s perspective, they’ve been a walking disaster for more than a decade. NAB’s share price, at around $26, is at the level it first hit in late 1998.
ANZ ($24) by comparison is at levels it first hit in 2005, CBA ($53) first hit that level in 2007 and Westpac ($24) shares reached that level first in 2006.
NAB, I will accept your apology. But given the delayed nature, there’s a late fee of $6438.
(Brammall family interests own shares in all the major banks mentioned in this column.)
Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser. bruce@debtman.com.au .