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.
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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?