Customers

Customer commitment

Our vision is to be Australia's finest financial services organisation through excelling in customer service. We have a range of initiatives and policies in place to fulfil the high level of commitment we give to all customers of the Commonwealth Bank.

Customer satisfaction

The Group’s retail customer satisfaction levels reached a 10-year high during 2007-08 and business customer satisfaction levels also showed significant improvements. All major banks have experienced a decline in main financial institution (MFI) customer satisfaction, as measured by Roy Morgan, during the 6 months to June 2008, reflecting a weakening overall in customer sentiment towards the sector. The Group experienced the smallest such decline of all the major banks over this period.  Colonial First State’s FirstChoice achieved the number one ranking for advisers’ overall satisfaction in the Wealth Insights MasterTrust survey.

The Group’s focus on sales and service is reflected in the achievement of a number of awards, including Money Magazine’s Bank of the Year for 2008 and the Group’s retail branch strategy being awarded “Best Branch Strategy” at the 2008 International Retail Banking awards.

Online statements

From January 2008, our customers have had the choice to switch from paper to online statements for most deposit and transaction accounts. By 25 July 2008, customers and our people had stopped paper statements on more than 460,000 accounts – a saving of over five and a half million sheets of paper per year.

Launch of sustainability investment fund

In September 2007, we launched the Generation Global Sustainability Fund. Available through Colonial First State’s FirstChoice investment platform, the fund is managed by Generation Investment Management LLP. Generation was co-founded in 2004 by former US Vice President Al Gore and former global CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood.

Generation has integrated sustainability as a key part of their fundamental investment analysis. They invest in companies which they believe best understand and respond to economic, health, environmental, social and governance factors, and also have the potential to profit most from these changes over the long-term.

United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment

Our asset management division, Colonial First State Global Asset Management, became a signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) on 1 March 2007, to better align investment practices with the interests of the Group’s institutional investors globally.

Since becoming a signatory, Colonial First State Global Asset Management has established comprehensive internal governance structures to assist with the implementation of the PRI across all investment teams and to drive the continuous improvement of responsible investment practices. Ultimately, the business believes this will lead to the delivery of improved risk-adjusted returns for clients.

This governance structure includes an executive-driven Responsible Investment Steering Committee, with underlying investment committees for listed investments and direct assets. As a result, the risk assessment of environmental, social and governance factors has become a fundamental part of investment processes across all asset classes and regions.

Colonial First State Global Asset Management have also formalised a Responsible Investment Policy Statement, a Climate Change Position Statement and has also updated its corporate governance policy to include environmental and social engagement factors.
Click here here for more information.

Responsible lending

We take our obligations to lend responsibly very seriously and have developed a responsible lending statement. In particular, we:

• do not offer credit increases to customers with a poor credit history or those who cannot meet the repayments on their credit card, even if they have collateral as security.
• do not offer pre-approved credit card limit increases to customers that we know are in receipt of Centrelink payments.
• provide customers with information on ways to reduce their debt and provide easy-to-understand guides such as ' Handling your Credit Card’ to assist customers.
• provide information that explains how interest is calculated and details applicable fees in clear and simple terms.
• have an established financial hardship unit to assist customers who fall into financial difficulty.
• provide a range of tools as an additional service for our customers to encourage sensible credit practices.