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Major bank instigates financial hardship specialist team
Scams, fraud, domestic and family violence, elder abuse, low financial literacy and gambling addiction will all be in the sights of a big four bank’s new customer service initiative.
Major bank instigates financial hardship specialist team
Scams, fraud, domestic and family violence, elder abuse, low financial literacy and gambling addiction will all be in the sights of a big four bank’s new customer service initiative.
Comprised of a new specialist team of bankers dedicated to recognising and responding to signs a customer is experiencing vulnerability, the new service announced by NAB aims to help detect the early stages of financial hardship and provide assistance to such customers.
According to NAB’s chief legal and commercial counsel, Sharon Cook, the new team of bankers “provides support well beyond that of traditional financial hardship assistance”.
“Every year we assist 1.4 million customers experiencing financial difficulty due to events such as injury, illness and unemployment,” she outlined.
“This support hub enables us to be more proactive by identifying hurdles our customers are experiencing and providing them with extra care.”
The support hub’s announcement follows a successful trial of the specialist service in June which was able to help more than 500 customers.
“By referring customers to community partners, we have been able to provide much-needed assistance to those experiencing elder and financial abuse, mental illness and credit card debt,” Ms Cook explained.
“We have also, at the request of customers, applied restrictions on gambling transactions on credit or debit cards that prevents them going further into debt.”
The service hub has also involved the setting up of a dedicated Indigenous customer service line for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander customers living in remote locations, “which is making a huge difference to how they access banking services”, according to Ms Cook.
The support hub’s creation is an action under the bank’s new customer vulnerability framework, which is purported to enable a more inclusive banking service “and better support for our customers in hard time”.
“The simpler and more inclusive we can make the process of managing the financial impacts associated with vulnerability, the lighter the load for our customers,” Ms Cook said.
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