CommBank slammed for trying to ‘pull the wool over our eyes’ over six-month $3 fee ‘pause’

CommBank raked in a staggering $9.8 billion profit for the 2024 financial year – and still tried to charge customers $3 to use their own money.

OPINION

Commonwealth Bank can tell its story walking.

Don’t try to pull the wool over our eyes with a six month “pause” on charging customers to withdraw their own money.

Perhaps I’m living in a different world to the executives at CommBank, but people blowing up about the fact they’d be charged $3 for someone to hand them their own cash was entirely predictable.

That CBA bosses didn’t see that – and are now blaming it on the fact that “changes are difficult”, and that they’ve “decided to announce a change in our approach” – is emblematic of the arrogance of the big banks.

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This is a business that turned a $9.8 billion profit for the 2024 financial year.

And we’re supposed to believe that a teller handing you some cash is such an expensive exercise that you must be charged $3 every time they do so?

Pray tell – what are the tellers doing the rest of the time?

That is if you can find one.

CommBank has closed more than 350 branches in the past five years because, apparently, people don’t go into them anymore.

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Fair enough. Go to an ATM instead, they say. Except that they have closed at least 2300 ATMs in the same period.

It’s all well and good to say fewer people are using branches, but there are some things that require you to go into a branch.

In this case, it wasn’t CommBank, but I had to go into a Westpac branch to be issued a debit card for a business account. I could not, for some reason or another, do that online.

CommBank raked in a staggering $9.8 billion profit for the 2024 financial year – and still tried to charge customers $3 to use their own money.

Luckily I had a Westpac branch about 1km down the road, but many are not so fortunate.

Here’s the thing: banks are meant to be providing a service. And yet you, the paying customer, are increasingly seen as an inconvenience.

People want to bank online now, they say. I’m sure many do – but when you force people to bank online because you close all the branches, then what else do you expect your data to show?

It’d be like only putting a Marlborough sauvignon blanc on the wine list and then saying it proves that people prefer it to the Adelaide Hills stuff.

Well, what else did you expect them to do?

They’ve set up the question to deliver the answer they want – and if you dispute it, then you must be wrong.

It’s so expensive to do business, they say. And yet they turn record profits.

The time has come for the federal government to grow a spine and put these corporate thugs back in their box.

CBA retail bank boss Angus Sullivan initially defended the hated $3 fee. Picture: Supplied

Journalist Caleb Bond says CBA is treating us ‘like mugs’. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Banking is an essential service as much as water or electricity is. And in acknowledgment of how important banks are to keeping our country financially stable, the government essentially promises to never let them fall over.

The government guaranteed bank deposits and borrowing by banks during the Global Financial Crisis, which helped maintain a stable banking system and sustained lending.

That’s good for us, because it creates certainty and makes sure we won’t lose our money – but it also means that banks, so long as they have some business sense, are guaranteed to turn profits in perpetuity without any risk of going bust.

It is an extraordinary advantage for any business and it ought to come with strings.

The federal government should demand that branches and ATMs remain open and that Australians can withdraw their money without being charged to do so.

The Banking Royal Commission uncovered widespread misconduct within the sector including money laundering and predatory lending.

Five years later they think we’ve forgotten and that they can quietly treat us like mugs.

But all is well, because they won’t charge you to withdraw your money for six months.

Pull the other one – it’s got jingle bells on.

Originally published as CommBank slammed for trying to ‘pull the wool over our eyes’ over six-month $3 fee ‘pause’