The head of Australia\u2019s biggest and most profitable bank says reimbursing hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to its lower income customers would be an \u201cappropriation\u201d of shareholder money.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth Bank\u2019s chief executive, Mat Comyn, mounted a fierce defence of charging fees according to its terms and conditions during a parliamentary committee hearing in Canberra on Tuesday morning,<\/p>\n
Australian Securities and Investments Commission in July<\/a> found that CBA \u2013 which reported a record cash profit of $10.3bn in the most recent financial year \u2013 and its subsidiary Bankwest charged about $270m fees to about 2.2 million low-income customers<\/a> over five years. Those fees included account-keeping, dishonour and overdraw charges.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n While other banks, such as Westpac<\/a>, have committed to fully repay what the regulator deemed \u201cexcessive fees\u201d, Comyn was defiant.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I was you \u2026 I\u2019d be looking at me and thinking, \u2018Well you work for a financial institution, your institution makes lots of money, why don\u2019t you just give that money back?\u2019,\u201d he said to Labor MP Ed Husic.<\/p>\n \u201cI can certainly understand that<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But he disputed Asic\u2019s description that \u201cevery dollar\u201d of the charges were \u201cexcessive\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were charged in accordance with the terms and conditions. (There was) nothing improper about those charges.\u201d<\/p>\n Comyn, who is one of the most influential business executives in the country, continued: \u201cIt\u2019s not merely a question of just handing the money over. It\u2019s, of course, not my or our money. It\u2019s the money of our owners.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think perhaps there\u2019s a sort of harsher interpretation of how a shareholder may think of that, which is, well, it\u2019s effectively appropriation of their property.\u201d<\/p>\n The head of policy at Choice, Morgan Campbell, said Comyn had \u201cgot it backwards\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore this money was in the pockets of Commbank shareholders, it was in the bank accounts of Australians on low incomes and it should never have been taken out,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n \u201cHis shareholders should never have had it in the first place.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThe other banks issued bulk refunds to at least some of their customers months ago. It\u2019s time for Commbank to stop making excuses and put this right.\u201d<\/p>\n While Comyn insisted the fees identified by Asic were not \u201cunlawful\u201d, there was some scope to make payments to some as a \u201cgoodwill\u201d gesture.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Westpac\u2019s CEO, Anthony Miller, told the parliamentary committee that his bank was fully refunding nearly $10m in fees charged to low-income customers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have agreed to refund those fees,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe are now proceeding through the cohort identified (by Asic) in July 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n The Westpac boss confirmed that the bank would automatically migrate current and future eligible customers into these special low-fee accounts, and that people would need to opt out.<\/p>\n Miller said the full amount would be refunded by March next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of Australia\u2019s biggest and most profitable bank says reimbursing hundreds of millions of dollars in fees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-292053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}