NAB to Pay $169 Million to 66,000 Underpaid Workers as ASIC Sues CBA Over Hidden Fees

National Australia Bank will pay $169 million to about 66,000 current and former staff after underpaying them for more than a decade, the Fair Work Ombudsman said on Thursday. The bank signed an enforceable undertaking with the regulator, agreeing to pay $127 million in wages, $34 million in interest and $8 million in superannuation.

NAB will also make a $2 million contrition payment to the Commonwealth, the largest ever included in an enforceable undertaking ordered by the ombudsman.

Back payments range from less than $5 to more than $87,000, including superannuation and interest, with an average back payment of about $1,900, according to AAP. The bank has already paid at least $155 million of the total.

Errors ran back to 2012

NAB first reported the underpayments to the ombudsman in late 2019, after it found it had made errors in applying its most recent enterprise agreement. An internal review found the errors stretched back to 2012, caused by record-keeping mistakes and outdated payroll technology moved across systems.

The errors included wrong time-sheet data, staff not accruing leave correctly and other entitlements under successive enterprise agreements.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said the case showed how payroll failures can run for years when an employer does not keep its systems in line with its workplace duties, and said the bank had committed to fixing its administrative systems.

Union calls underpayment theft

NAB executive Sarah White said the bank takes its payroll obligations “extremely seriously”. “We sincerely apologise for these unintended errors. We have and will continue to remediate anyone who has been impacted,” she said.

The Financial Services Union said the case was one of the worst cases of employee underpayment in Australian corporate history. “Underpayment of wages is theft, pure and simple, and is unacceptable at any employer,” the union’s national president, Wendy Streets, said. “It is hard to believe a big four bank with all its resources would make such a colossal mistake over such a long period of time.”

Payroll expert Brett Cowan warned that some of the country’s biggest employers could be sitting on millions of dollars in payroll mistakes because their systems repeat the same error each year. “It’s a business risk, and it belongs on the board’s agenda and if a company can’t explain how its payroll calculations work, its board should be asking why,” he said.

ASIC sues Commonwealth Bank on the same day

In a separate case on Thursday, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission sued the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the Federal Court, alleging the bank charged tens of thousands of CommBiz customers $8.5 million in undisclosed fees, according to Law360.

NAB ranks third in size among Australian banks, behind Commonwealth Bank and Westpac, and reported a net profit of $6.14 billion in 2026, AAP reported. The ombudsman recovered more than $450 million in unpaid wages and entitlements for more than 181,000 workers in 2025-26.

Reporting based on coverage by AAP and Law360.