ANZ Bank kicks off the 2019-20 bank reporting season on Thursday but the NAB snuck on in Friday with a pre-release update of its own with news of another $600 million-plus of losses and impairments, including wage underpayments to staff.
The ANZ reported a 60% drop in cash earnings to $1.41 billion for the march half year as it lifted provisions to handle projected bad and doubtful debts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
That improved to a cash result of $1.5 billion for the third quarter which points to a full year result of $4.2 to $4.4 billion, depending on any more provisions for bad debts.
The interim dividend was delayed but eventually paid at 25 cents a share. The final last year was 80 cents a share, 70% franked.
If the ANZ has impairments or further write down it will announce them before the results announcement on Thursday – it what the NAB did on Friday ahead of its results on November 4.
NAB said the second-half results will include $642 million in provisions and impairments. The bank announced total impairment provisions, software write-downs and other charges of $2.293 billion for the six months to March 31. The latest charges will take the cost to close to $3 billion for the year to September 30.
In Friday’s announcement that NAB said a total of $245 million will be spent by the bank on customer remediation relating to non-compliant advice given and fees charged to customers of its since-sold MLC Wealth division.
NAB will also incur a $135 million expense associated with the cost of executing the remediation program for both existing and new matters.
The bank has also identified a number of staff overpayments and underpayments, with remediation costs for the latter totalling $128 million. NAB said it will remediate staff for payments stretching back to October 2012.
Finally, a $134 million charge will be recognised for an impairment of the bank’s property-related assets, primarily around the consolidation of its Melbourne office space as the company expects more staff to permanently adopt from-home working arrangements due to COVID-19.
NAB shares rose 0.6% to $19.53 on Friday.
