National Australia Bank has more than 200,000 call for help in past week

National Australia Bank has taken more calls from customers in the past five days than it would normally see in an entire year.

NAB CEO Ross McEwan. Picture: AAP

National Australia Bank has taken more calls from customers in the past five days than it would normally see in an entire year, with more than 200,000 customers reaching out to the bank in the past week, chief executive Ross McEwan has revealed.

The bank has had to dramatically increase the number of staff in its call centres in response to the “exponential” lift in volumes, Mr McEwan said in a television interview late Sunday.

“The volume of customers that are making contact, as you can imagine, has been huge. Over 200,000 customers made an enquiry and were looking for help,” he told Channel 7.

“In five days, our NAB Assist team took more calls than they would normally do in an entire year. The volumes of calls from customers looking for assistance has just gone up exponentially,” he said.

Also writing in The Australian, Mr McEwan said about 25,000 of the calls related to enquiries about the bank’s coronavirus support package, while the rest were enquiries including credit limits and overdraft facilities.

Among the big four banks NAB has the biggest exposure to small to mid-sized business customers, which means it has more sensitivity to a downturn in the sector. But the surge in numbers are a worrying sign for the broader economy because they highlight the rapid pace of the downturn.

“The thing I’d ask people is just to be very patient. We’ve put extra staff in, we’ve got about 750 of our colleagues in training now to go in to our contact centres,” Mr McEwan said.

“We’ve been working very strongly with government, the Reserve Bank and regulators to make sure what we’re doing is actually helpful and looking after customers in what are unprecedented times.”

The bank was giving customers a six-month break on principal and interest repayments, Mr McEwan said, after which it would see “who had found their way through these difficulties and those who are still struggling”.

“The big thing is that a bank like NAB is there to help and we want to get as many customers as we can, both individuals and SMEs, over this hurdle,” he added.

Mr McEwan’s comments come as CBA revealed it had received 27,000 requests for home loan repayment deferrals since March 20.

This compares to the 25,000 requests for assistance ANZ received over the same time, with the bank recording a 400 per cent jump in call volumes.

Westpac by Thursday had fielded enquiries from more than 44,000 home loan customers and 17,000 business customers applying for assistance. CBA chief executive Matt Comyn last week confirmed the bank had granted more than 15,000 home loan deferral payment requests since announcing its relief program, with customers inundating the bank with requests for help.

CBA group executive for retail Angus Sullivan last week said the bank was preparing for “large volumes” of hardship enquiries and was in talks with Qantas and Virgin Australia to have some of their call centre staff assist the bank with the surge in volumes. While the lender was expecting the surge in hardship inquiries to continue, Mr Sullivan said it was hard to form a view about how the crisis would play out.

“Our focus right now is making sure that we resource-up as much as we possibly can so that when people contact us, we can offer them great service and help them,” he said.