(28 February 2010 – Australia) National Australia Bank’s chief executive Cameron Clyne, is reportedly “delighted” by all the fuss the bank’s “break up” campaign has generated, including a 15-fold surge in traffic to the bank’s account switching website.Speaking to The Weekend Australian, Mr Clyne told the newspaper that the reinvigorated competition has diminished the case for more government intervention.
‘Industries need to respond on their own terms to keep governments out,’ Mr Clyne continued.
‘It’s interesting that the prospect of government intervention seems to have diminished with competition emerging in the market.’
Weekly hits on the account switching site before the ‘break-up’ campaign peaked at 2500 and last week following the media stunts, online visits surged to more than 200,000 a day.
‘We’ve had a spike in all the measures you’d expect to see — transaction account openings and credit card and mortgage inquiries,’ he said.
Mr Clyne would not speculate on the next move in NAB’s rolling ‘fair value’ campaign, however said the results so far showed a turnaround in NAB’s laggard retail bank.