Commonwealth Bank faces customer exodus amid backlash over interest rate hike

EXTRA staff needed to deal with an exodus of angry Commonwealth customers wanting to switch home loans after rates hike.

The Commonwealth Bank's home loans division has been flooded with angry customers after its interest rate hike last week. Picture: Craig Greenhill

THE Commonwealth Bank has had to bring dozens of extra staff into its home loans division to deal with an exodus of angry customers enraged by its interest rate hike.

An extra 40 staff had to be drafted to field calls from customers wanting to leave the bank or find out details of the impact of its decision to increase the rate on its home loans by 0.45 per cent.

Between 20 and 25 extra staff are still in the home loans division after what the bank confirmed was an unprecedented torrent of calls after its Melbourne Cup day rate increase.

A spokesman for the bank, Bryan Fitzgerald, said “the majority of people were making inquiries” about the impact of the increase on their home loan and others were asking how much it would cost to take their business elsewhere.

"At the moment there are an additional 25 telephone operators in place," Mr Fitzgerald told news.com.au.

The bank would continue to try and meet its standard of responding to calls from customers within 48 hours, he said.

While there had been spikes in calls around previous rate increases, the volume of inquiries had forced the bank to direct unprecedented resources into the area over the past week, Mr Fitzgerald said.

Staff abused, spat on

It follows ugly incidents in CBA branches around the country with customers abusing staff personally, with one report that a bank employee was spat upon.

The bank raised the rate on its standard home loan by almost double the Reserve Bank's interest official rate rise of 0.25 per cent on Melbourne Cup day last week.

The bank's chief executive, Ralph Norris, has been defending the decision to increase its charges on the grounds that its funding costs have increased.

Amid the public outcry the three other major banks have yet to follow the Commonwealth in increasing their mortgage rates beyond the RBA increase.

The Government has since indicated it intends to crack down on exit fees that banks charge customers who try to transfer their loan to another bank.