Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn appeared before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics and was questioned about two separate fee controversies, Yahoo Finance reported. CBA paid back $68m in what Comyn described as a goodwill gesture in relation to a matter involving low-income and Centrelink customers in high-fee accounts, while maintaining the bank did nothing wrong.
A separate matter before the committee was ASIC's civil penalty proceedings filed in the Federal Court against CBA, which allege that around 42,000 CommBiz business customers were overcharged roughly $8.5m in transaction fees between 2020 and 2025. CBA stated it had already repaid the customers affected by the CommBiz overcharging. Comyn said the situation should not have happened, that the bank had apologised and that the excessive fees matter was not something the bank could take pride in.
Committee chair Ed Husic argued that low-income customers in high-fee accounts who had done nothing wrong had not been remediated. CBA customers who were in high-fee accounts and identified by ASIC as eligible for low or no-fee accounts have not received a formal remediation beyond the $68m goodwill payment.
NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine also appeared before the committee and was questioned about the bank underpaying 66,000 workers $127m over a period linked to a payroll system introduced in 2012. NAB's total repayment for the underpayment matter will be $169m, with about $5m still outstanding. The underpayment problem spanned two distinct periods: 2012 to 2019, and then this year following the introduction of a new enterprise bargaining agreement.
Irvine acknowledged the underpayment issue as longstanding and said NAB had self-reported payroll compliance failures tracing to the 2011 employment bargaining agreement. He said payroll complexity meant it was possible workers did not know they were being underpaid, but acknowledged that if complaints were made and not acted upon during that period, that would be appalling. Irvine said the payroll system had been updated to correct the problem.
Husic questioned Irvine about NAB's plan to cut 2,500 mostly Australian roles while the bank recorded a full-year cash profit of $6.1bn and has around 7,000 staff in Asia. Husic put to Irvine that Indian staff receive an average of about $40,500, described as a fraction of what Australian colleagues are paid for similar roles.
Irvine acknowledged the offshore staffing arrangement could be saving the bank hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but rejected the suggestion that offshoring is primarily about obtaining cheaper labour, attributing the decisions also to skills availability in Australia. He said wage costs are a factor but not the dominant reason for offshoring technology roles, citing an insufficient domestic pipeline of STEM graduates.
NAB employees affected by the underpayment matter are still owed about $5m in outstanding repayments. Some Australian workers face job losses in favour of offshore staff under NAB's plan to cut 2,500 mostly Australian roles, though the bank says customer-facing roles will not be materially affected.
Reporting: Yahoo Finance
Written by Pick & Scroll News from the reporting and documents linked above.
