Commonwealth Bank CEO fronts a parliamentary committee

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn has been appearing before a parliamentary committee, grilled on the cost of living, credit card surcharges and scams.

Transcript

00:00We got the insight from the biggest bank boss in the country, take away the Reserve Bank.

00:07The Commonwealth Bank banks around 7 million people, so they have great insight into what

00:11is happening.

00:12They're obviously concerned about the cost of living and CEO Matt Common gave some detail

00:17about the level of stress that people are finding, particularly as mortgages hover at

00:22this very high interest rates, most affecting people between the ages of 35 and 44 who have

00:28the highest level of those mortgages and are most sensitive to price changes.

00:34Nothing particularly explosive today, but a really deep insight into some of the issues

00:40there.

00:41We're not seeing a huge jump in what is called arrears, which is people behind on their payments,

00:47but there is some complexity to that.

00:49It may be that the fact that we still have really high housing values and property prices

00:55being high.

00:56If people are stretched, they're probably selling out.

00:59So a lot of diverse range of questions from the politically diverse questioners on the

01:04committee on everything from funding gas to changes to the tax system, but some more insight

01:11from Australia's biggest bank boss.

01:14And the Greens yesterday, Dan, suggested a so-called Robin Hood tax to take more money

01:19from big corporations.

01:21What was Mr Common's response to that?

01:24I've been watching Matt Common in hearings like this for many years, and I have rarely

01:29seen him go off tap like this.

01:31He didn't raise his voice or break a sweat, but he expressed extreme frustration with

01:37what he called, and I'll use my notes here, an insidious populism of the idea that companies

01:43can just have money taken from them.

01:44He said it ignores the beneficial elements that businesses large and small make.

01:49We employ 50,000 people.

01:50We just paid out $7 billion in dividends.

01:53It's a policy based on the idea that there's some pool of assets that can be tapped and

01:57there's no consequences of that.

01:59And he took a little breath to focus and kept going, calling it a false dichotomy that there

02:04is something unjust and that profit has to be unjustifiably extracted and that there's

02:10a reason that this should not be so.

02:11He called it performative, designed to attract attention and said the idea lacked rigour

02:16and merit and relies on assumptions that are demonstrably false.

02:21This is, I know it sounds very measured, but by bank boss standards, a pretty rare and

02:26substantial intervention into politics, absolutely kicking the Greens idea for a 40% super profits

02:33tax on institutions like banks.

02:36Scams are a substantial problem for Australian bank customers, of course.

02:40What did he say about that?

02:41He talked about the scale of that.

02:44Just how many people are employed at the bank over 4,000, essentially specifically to reduce

02:49and prevent scams.

02:50He talked about some of the things they're trying to do to reduce and prevent those and

02:55really giving it to the social media companies, many of whom profit from advertisements that

03:01are clearly linked to scam investments, trying to take people's money.

03:06Some real frustration there, there's often talk of a UK model where in the UK, banks

03:11are forced to compensate most people who are involved in scams.

03:14We don't have that here because essentially it creates a bit of a moral hazard about what

03:19customers have to do, the steps they have to take to prevent being scammed at the same

03:23time as banks doing the same thing to prevent their customers being scammed.

03:27This is an ongoing issue, it is eroding trust in institutions and we got a real sense today

03:32of just the scale of the problem and how substantial it is and how much it's costing the banks

03:39as well as customers.

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