CBA pauses plan to charge customers for cash withdrawals

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Commonwealth bank says it's 'pausing' changes it announced yesterday, which would see some account holders pay a three-dollar withdrawal fee at branches and post offices.

Transcript

00:00A lot of people complaining that it seems completely out of touch to introduce new fees

00:07at a time when a lot of people are undergoing a cost of living crisis and quite frankly

00:12it seems greedy for Australia's biggest company to be levying fees on people who can

00:17likely least afford it.

00:20Now what those changes that the Commonwealth Bank would like to bring in, and it's important

00:24to say that they would still like to bring them in, are, is moving people who currently

00:29hold complete access accounts, that's approximately 10% of their customer base, across to what

00:37are called smart access accounts.

00:40Now it's those smart access accounts that have fees on withdrawing from branches and

00:47from post offices.

00:49It's important to note it doesn't include a fee on withdrawing from ATMs.

00:54Now the Commonwealth Bank says 90% of the people who are currently on complete access

00:59accounts would be better off if they were transferred to the smart access accounts.

01:05But it acknowledges that there are around 10% of customers, often those who use cash

01:09a lot, that could potentially be worse off.

01:12So what it's announced today is that it's pausing the moving of some of those customers,

01:17that 10%, until they've had the chance to speak with them first, which is approximately

01:23a six-month process, they estimate.

01:26The Commonwealth Bank representative, Angus Sullivan, acknowledged today that this announcement

01:32could have been handled a lot better.

01:34We feel that we could have done a better job communicating this to our customers to make

01:37it clearer how we would support them, and we want to be able to take the time, as much

01:42time as is needed, we're planning for six months at the moment, to engage with all of

01:47those customers who are affected by this change in a way that they might be better off served

01:52in another product, and we want to make sure that we've got the time available to do that

01:55properly, rather than the approach that we'd initially proposed.

01:59The Commonwealth Bank says that less and less people are using cash and actually providing

02:04cash for people to withdraw cost money, and so they want to recoup some of those costs.

02:11And so the question for big banks like Commonwealth is, do we make those who use cash pay to withdraw,

02:18or do we make our entire customer base, the vast majority of whom don't likely use cash

02:24or use it very infrequently, to make them pay through fees or charges on their accounts?

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