In a statement released by NAB Executive General Manager International Branches Peter Coad, he advises that 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.
