NAB sorry for overnight outage, restores services

National Australia Bank has apologised to its customers for the overnight outage that affected the bank’s systems. Chief customer officer Andrew Hagger recorded a video message to the customers on Wednesday after access to mobile Internet banking and customer call centres were temporarily halted.

The outage also affected the processing of some customer payments. The ATMs were operating as normal, though, and the bank has opened its business banking centres and branches for customers who needed access to their money.

“We’re sorry that we’ve let our customers down and we’ll do our best today to work with you through our branches,” Hagger said. “We recognise the impact that this outage is causing and we can assure you we’re working hard to make things right.”

By Wednesday afternoon, NAB was able to restore some of the services following the overnight system outage, allowing customers to log on to NAB Connect, NAB Internet Banking and UBank Online Banking.

“We have also now processed a large number of overnight transactions, which had been delayed. However, I understand there are still customers waiting for payments – this delay is not acceptable and we apologise,” Hagger told customers affected by the outage.

Meanwhile, NAB has announced it will stop giving money to political parties. As first noted by Sydney Morning Herald, the bank has quietly added changes to its policy statement on political donations. The NAB Board agreed in May that all political donations would cease “with immediate effect.”

“NAB does not make donations or contribute funds to any political party, Parliamentarian, elected official or candidate for political office,” the policy reads.

It defines political donations to include monetary gift, non-monetary or “in kind” gift, contribution, entry fee or other payments allowing a person to participate in or benefit from a fundraising event. It forbids political donations to a political party, member of Parliament, local government councillor, political candidate or group of political candidates.

NAB has given more than $500,000 to Australia’s two major political parties in the past three years.