(15 May 2025 – Australia) Admitting CommBank is the bigger business bank, NAB confirms that a priority focus for the group “is how we close the gap with CBA in business deposits” Banking Day reports.
NAB CEO Andrew Irvine highlighted at the bank’s half-year results investor briefing that the bank had not been a good deposit gathering bank over the decades. Over the six months to March 2025, NAB’s group net profit fell by three percent year-on-year to A$3.41 billion. Cash earnings in Business and Private Banking fell one percent to A$1.6 billion.
“That’s something that when I joined the bank, former CEO Ross McEwan and I wanted to address. If you look at the difference between our ROE and CBA’s ROE in business banking, I put the entire delta down to deposits. Our focus is on being a better transaction bank. We still don’t have the loan to deposit mix in business banking with Commonwealth Bank. This is a hard, long-term thing to change.”
“In which segments is CBA accumulating business deposits the most actively? Among large corporate enterprises or driven ‘bottom up’ by small businesses? East & Partners Deposit Funding & Debt Index (DFDI), based on APRA monthly banking statistics drawn directly from inputs from ADIs, overlays East’s demand-side segmentation analysis to produce valuable cuts of business deposit volumes by segment. Through 2024, business banks were attracting lower business deposit volumes relative to loan balances” commented East & Partners Global Head of Markets Analysis, Martin Smith.
“The research breaks down which segments are net depositors into the banking system vs net borrowers, highlighting for every dollar borrowed how much they deposit which provides a valuable extra level of detail on highly competitive business deposit flows”.