Three of the big four banks pay less than in 2007, once you count inflation

By Ryan Wimalasena · 23 September 2026 · 6 min read

There is a sentence Australians say about bank shares the way other countries talk about the weather: the banks always pay. It's broadly true. Even in 2020, with a regulator leaning on them, they paid something. What the sentence never asks is what the payment buys.

So take each bank's own payment record, the dividends per share it has actually paid, and put the two it paid in 2007, the last full year before the financial crisis, beside the two it has declared most recently. Then do the thing almost nobody does, and count the 68% that prices have risen since.

What 2007's dividend is worth now

Commonwealth Bank's last two dividends come to A$5.05, the second of them payable on 29 September, against A$2.56 in 2007. Adjusted for prices, 2007's pair is worth A$4.30 now, so CBA's dividend has grown 17% in real terms. It is the only one of the four that has.

Westpac's 154 cents buy 30% less than its 131 cents did. ANZ's 166 cents buy 27% less, and carry less franking than they used to: its latest two were 70% and 75% franked, where 2007's were fully franked. NAB pays 170 cents against 182 cents in 2007, which is less before inflation is counted at all, and 44% less once it is.

Held is a cut, slowly

The most comforting word in a results release is “maintained”. NAB paid 198 cents a year for five straight years, 2014 to 2018. Prices rose 6.7% across that stretch, which made each maintained dividend a small cut nobody announced, about 6% by the end of it.

A dividend that stands still is falling at the rate of inflation, and one that never grows eventually stops paying your bills. The banks are where a lot of Australian income portfolios keep that risk, because for many of them the banks are the biggest single source of income.

The best and the worst, year by year

Both lines fall off a cliff in 2020, the year APRA asked the banks to hold back and Westpac paid 31 cents for the whole year. CBA was back above its 2007 level in real terms by 2021. NAB's dividend is still worth a little more than half of what it was.

What this doesn't say

None of this is a verdict on any bank as an investment. Share prices moved differently, all four issued new shares over the period, and NAB's 2016 demerger of its UK business handed its holders shares in a separate company. Total return is a different question with a different answer.

This is narrower. The dividend per share is the thing an income investor actually lives on, it is on the public record for every bank, and almost nobody checks it against prices. Checking takes the bank's own history page and one number from the RBA.

Where Guardian fits

Guardian keeps that record for whatever you own: every dividend per share, next to the one before it, with the date. It shows how much of your income comes from the banks as a group, which in many Australian portfolios is more than from anything else, and how that compares with how much of your money is there. It tells you the day a company confirms a change. It doesn't adjust for inflation. It keeps the numbers you would need to, which is the part that is hard to rebuild ten years later.

Dividend Guardian provides information and estimates from public data, not personal financial advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, hold or sell any bank or other company. Dividends are ordinary dividends per share from each bank's own payment history, leaving out Westpac's 15 cent special of June 2024; inflation is the June quarter consumer price index from the RBA's table G1. Per-share figures leave out new shares, reinvestment and demergers, and past dividends say nothing certain about future ones. Guardian reports confirmed changes; it does not predict them.