The Commonwealth Bank’s (CBA) new customer advocate has met with Wagga businesses and community groups in what appears to be an effort to combat widespread distrust of the financial industry.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
However, consumer rights experts say the banks have a long way to go to repair a broken image.
Brendan French, CBA’s former customer relations chief, said he wanted to get a better understanding of how the bank could work with rural and regional people. But despite promises of a “frank and fearless” discussion of banking concerns, Dr French was unable to field questions about key issues like fees and charges in the face of a record $4.89 billion half-year profit.
“The banks are under a lot of scrutiny and the establishment of my office is one of the responses to that,” Dr French said.
“I’m not independent of the bank, but I’m independent within the bank. People can be confident there is a free, fair voice for them in the business.”
Financial policy expert Erin Turner from consumer rights group Choice said the once-respected finance industry had been tarnished by “scandal after scandal”.
“In the latest data we have, customers paid more than $12 billion in bank fees in a single year,” Ms Turner said.
“Customers rightly have questions about those fees and the quality of the products they’re paying for.
“The culture has to change; where banks used to be trusted institutions the focus has gone from a service focus to a sales focus.”
Ms Turner said Dr French’s new role was a “positive step” towards winning back the public’s trust, but warned it wasn’t solely a public relations problem.
“Those conversations need to be frank and cover a wide range of concerns,” she said.
“But there are other steps to reform, like making sure frontline staff aren’t focused on sales over service and repaying money owed from the financial advice scandal.
“There’s no single silver bullet, but understanding the bad behaviour and fixing that going forward is a start.”
Dr French said he hoped he could herald a new era of customer relations at CBA.
“I’m really excited, I hope people have confidence we’ll take this to heart and do what we can to make banking simpler, fairer and easier,” he said.
“We’re going to put what we learn in Wagga to work right across the bank to improve the way we do things and prevent potential problems.”