Unlike Commonwealth Bank, which this week said it expected the majority of people deferred loans could resume repayments, Mr McEwan said it would not make a prediction on how many of these customers would recover. The bank has in recent months been calling clients with deferred loans, and Mr McEwan said it had contacted 24,000 of the 90,000 customers so far, starting with the highest-risk loans.

As ASIC said, we’ll take every reasonable step to keep people in homes and keep them moving, but there unfortunately will be some situations where it’s better off for people to actually sell up and start again, so that they can take some equity out of the situation.

NAB chief Ross McEwan

"I think we’ll hold our views on this until we’ve done a lot more of the call backs, particularly into our business customers," Mr McEwan said.

Mr McEwan made it clear the bank would need to continue supporting some customers, and there would be some borrowers who would be better off selling their properties.

"It’s very clear that there will be a large number of people who will need support of some shape or form at the end of this, and that could be through restructuring of loans, be they business or home loans, going onto interest only for a period of time. But there are a number of things that we can do to be helpful here," he said.

"As ASIC said, we’ll take every reasonable step to keep people in homes and keep them moving, but there unfortunately will be some situations where it’s better off for people to actually sell up and start again, so that they can take some equity out of the situation."

NAB said its economic outlook remained uncertain, and its forecasts showed the level of gross domestic product returning to pre-COVID-19 levels in late 2022.

"What’s ahead remains highly uncertain, and the situation in Victoria and Auckland shows how quickly these things can change,” Mr McEwan said.

"When you look forward, we believe that the economies of both New Zealand and Australia will start picking up through 2021 and 2022 we start to get back to a GDP that we exited the 2019 year at," Mr McEwan said.

It came as NAB reported a 7 per cent fall in unaudited cash earnings of $1.55 billion. Credit impairment charges of $570 million during the quarter were higher than the same quarter last year, but lower than the previous June quarter when it took a large provision for COVID-19-related bad debts.

Amid a series of restructures that are set to result in job losses, NAB's expenses rose 2 per cent, and it said achieving a target to keep expenses broadly flat looked "increasingly challenging", in part due to the extra staff needed to support customers.