CBA to ‘work intensely’ for open-banking start

Commonwealth Bank’s retail chief, Angus Sullivan, says it will be challenging to meet a July open-banking start date.

Commonwealth Bank’s Angus Sullivan Picture: Chris Pavlich

Commonwealth Bank’s retail chief, Angus Sullivan, has admitted it would be challenging to meet a July open-banking start date, as it works to manage the coronavirus pandemic’s fallout and keep ­branches and call centres operating.

He added, though, the CBA, the nation’s largest retail bank, was “working intensely” to meet the deadline for the new open-banking regime that gives customers more control of their data.

The work on readying for open banking comes as CBA’s leadership team meets more regularly, led by chief executive Matt Comyn, to figure out ways to keep branches and call centres functioning and liquidity in the economy if there is a staff lockdown.

“There is additional thinking under way about what we can do,” Mr Sullivan said, noting CBA had plans in place for call centre staff to work remotely if it became necessary.

The bank is also keeping close tabs on the needs of small businesses, casual workers and the elderly to help maintain the supply of cash in the economy.

“It is going to be a challenging period, and run for a number of months,” Mr Sullivan said.

“It’s a very fluid dynamic.”

In transaction behaviour, CBA had seen an increase in the level of spending as panic buying had set in during recent weeks but said there was no sign of disruption in lending or deposit portfolios.

Mr Sullivan expressed confidence that as a large well-capitalised bank, CBA would be “very strong and very resilient” through the down cycle.

Meeting the first start date for open banking in July would be difficult given the sector had “a lot on” but he was still working towards that.

“It is a challenge to meeting the timeline but we are very committed to getting there.”

Mr Sullivan cited a $500m investment across the industry to prepare for the sweeping regime.

Open banking has already been subject to a string of delays.

In December, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission postponed the open-banking start date to July due to “new additional implementation work and testing” of systems.

The prevailing view for implementing open banking in Australia was to boost competition as it forces large banks to share an individual’s data with a third party when permission is granted.

CBA on Monday provided additional information to a parliamentary committee on financial and regulatory technology and answered questions on notice.

It highlighted that since July 2019 the bank had taken down 267 fake websites designed to trick bank customers.

CBA also argued that screen-scraping technology, which helps fintechs attract customers, left those customers using it more than two times more likely to ­experience fraud.

“It is increasingly difficult to tell cyber criminals and screen scrapers apart,” said Brendan Hopper, who runs CBA’s cybersecurity centre.

“They are the exact same technologies the criminals are using.”

The CBA submission rejected claims the bank was being anti-competitive by warning customers not to provide user identification and passwords to fintechs which undertake screen-scraping.

Micro-investing firm Raiz has been entangled in a dispute with CBA over screen-scraping and had previously said open banking would benefit incumbents.

Industry body FinTech Australia also expressed concerns about CBA’s actions.