Your Customer Advocate

The Office of the Customer Advocate supports the Customer Advocate to focus on two main areas.

Customer advocacy

An important part of the Customer Advocate’s role is to ensure that our customers remain at the heart of everything we do.

This includes providing guidance to the Bank on complex and sensitive customer issues – particularly where our customers may be in vulnerable circumstances or where there could be unintended consequences for our customers or the community.

The Customer Advocate makes sure that customer and community expectations are foundational to the Bank’s purpose of building a brighter future for all. This is done using insights and information gathered during conversations with community groups and the Bank’s own staff.

Customer outcomes

To help the Bank identify, address and prevent unintended outcomes for its customers, the Customer Advocate regularly reviews the Bank’s products, services, processes and systems to see where things can be improved.

These insights are shared with the Bank to help avoid reoccurring problems.

What we’re focused on

The Customer Advocate is currently committed to:

• Improving the financial wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander customers and communities
• Developing ways in which the Bank can better support customers who identify as LGBTIQA+, home loan guarantors, incarcerated customers – among others.
• Spending time with community organisations across Australia to understand the issues that are affecting the Bank’s customers, such as floods and bushfires, and find ways to make improvements to the Bank’s response.