Commonwealth Bank’s ‘change in approach’ on new $3 withdrawal fee

The Commonwealth Bank will “change its approach” after its plan to charge some customers $3 to withdraw cash from a branch sparked national fury. The bank informed customers via email this week it would close its Complete Access account and move affected customers to its Smart Access account. The new accounts, in place from January 6, 2025, would include a $3 fee tacked onto every withdrawal at a branch, a post office or by phone, the email said. On Wednesday, group executive retail banking services Angus Sullivan said the bank would rethink how the changes were implemented and “pause” the change for some customers. “We know that account changes are difficult, and especially at this time of year and with so many Australians challenged with cost-of-living pressures, we’ve decided to announce a change in our approach,” he said. However, Commonwealth Bank stopped short of completely removing the service fee. ”For our Complete Access customers, which is roughly 10 per cent of our 10-million-odd customers, there are approximately 90 per cent of our Complete Access customers for whom the change that we announced yesterday would put them in a better or equal position to today,” Mr Sullivan said. “For those customers, we will continue with migrating them to the lower monthly account keeping fee bank account option. “If that doesn’t work for customers, of course, they can be in contact with us and we can arrange an alternative solution for them.” Mr Sullivan said the change would be “paused” for customers who might take a financial hit from the change and the bank would reach out to individual customers. “The other customers, those that we expected might be slightly worse off and need more support in making sure that their banking arrangements were appropriate, we’re going to pause the changes that we announced, and we’re going to spend the next six months individually engaging with each of those customers to make sure that we have a solution tailored for each one of them, rather than a simple migration across to the Smart Access account,” he said. Mr Sullivan said the bank was changing its approach following outrage from customers. “This is based on us listening to our customers and making sure that we do the best that we can by them,” Mr Sullivan said. “As I mentioned, we feel we didn’t get the communication right on this, and so we’ve paused, and we want to take a different approach, the approach that we’ve outlined of having a more individual approach engaging each of the customers to make sure we’ve got a solution. “So it’s very much from listening to our customers and making sure that we adapt our approaches.” Mr Sullivan tried to defend the policy, noting the bank offers alternatives such as ATMs, even as CBA made $9.8bn in the last financial year. “The reality is those other payment methods are a cheaper service for us to provide, and so we are ensuring that we can offer competitive service to those customers who choose to bank that way and cover a fraction of the costs of providing them with a more expensive service,” he said. In a statement to NewsWire on Tuesday, CBA said it continued to offer customers free cash withdrawals from its national ATM network. “Our Smart Access account has a $3 assisted withdrawal fee. This is our main transaction account and the assisted withdrawal fees on that account have not changed,” they said. “We continue to offer waivers on assisted withdrawal fees for customers who meet certain criteria, including certain types of pension recipients and those under 18 years of age.” The fee will be void for Smart Access customers under the age of 18 or reliant on over-the-counter services because of a disability or if someone is on an aged based pension. Should cash withdrawals be free? While Commonwealth Bank insists it has no plans to go cashless, it has opened “specialist centres” that do not have tellers that handle physical cash. Commonwealth Bank faced fury from customers and politicians, with Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones calling the decision “the worst Christmas present imaginable”. “This is a kick in the guts for ordinary Australians and the worst Christmas present imaginable,” Jones told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday. He also explained that only about 10 per cent of customers would be impacted by the change. “For our Smart Access customers, approximately 90 per cent of them will be better off or will have a neutral outcome as a result of this change,” Mr Sullivan said. He added that there are plenty of fee-free options available, including ATMs and deposit ATMs in every branch, with staff ready to help customers avoid the charge. Instead, these specialist centres focus on business and home loan products, credit facilities and merchant services. The move comes after the company’s full-year announcement that it was spending $410m on cash services for the year ending June 2024. Of this, about $350m was cash on hand.