The chief executive of CBA, Matt Comyn, has mounted a fierce defence of the bank’s decision to not repay $270m in fees to 2.2 million low-income customers after a report by Asic in July. CBA has already paid $25m in ‘goodwill payments’ to tens of thousands of low-income Indigenous customers after the regulator in 2024 released a report which found banks were keeping vulnerable customers in high-fee accounts. But Comyn this morning doubled down on the bank’s hardline approach to Asic’s more recent report that accused the bank of charging hundreds of millions of dollars in excessive fees to millions of customers who were eligible for low-fee accounts.
The bank boss said there was ‘nothing improper’ about the fees charged to these customers, as they were charged in line with the published terms of conditions. He said the bank was a commercial entity and that at its extreme, returning those fees to its customers could be seen by the bank’s shareholders as ‘an appropriation of our property’
