CBA chief economist Stephen Halmarick to move on

Bank economist says he is seeking new challenges and opportunities after serving 16 years at CBA.

CBA chief economist Stephen Halmarick has announced he will leave the bank in January. Photographed in Sydney on Wednesday. Hollie Adams/The Australian

Commonwealth Bank’s Stephen Halmarick is stepping down after four years as chief economist at Australia’s biggest bank.

Mr Halmarick will head up the economics team until late January, at which point he will seek out new opportunities.

“I’m at the stage of my life and career where I’m looking for new challenges and opportunities. I’ve been at CBA for 16 years and so I just thought it was a good time to look forward to the next chapter,” Mr Halmarick said.

Second-in-command Gareth Aird is thought to be a potential contender for the job.

Mr Halmarick, with more than three decades’ experience as a financial markets economist, was promoted to head the CBA team in April 2020, just as the pandemic was kicking into high gear. He had previously led CBA’s global economic and markets research team and before that was chief economist for Colonial First State.

Mr Halmarick said his promotion to chief economist in 2020 came at a “challenging” time, with Covid rocking markets and economies.

“But I think one of the big benefits for us here at CBA was the access to a lot of really great internally generated data,” he said.

“So that helped us navigate through that very difficult time and helped us keep clients up to date with what was happening in the economy.

“The other big thing we’ve done is develop what we call the sustainable economics stream of work. That’s been very positive as well.”

With rates pushing higher, and staying higher for longer than many expected, CBA has been on the dovish side of rate ­expectations, tipping the Reserve Bank to cut as soon as November. But the market is coming around to the bank’s point of view, now pricing in a 25-basis-point drop by December.

“We’ve had Canada, Europe, the UK and New Zealand all cut rates, and now (Jerome) Powell has made it very clear the US is about to go. So we think Australia will be able to join that trend before year end,” Mr Halmarick said.