CBA accelerates digital strategy to give customers global best technology

Commonwealth Bank Chief Executive Officer, Matt Comyn, today announced that the Bank is accelerating its digital strategy with an ambition to provide customers with one of the best digital experiences of any company globally.

Speaking at CBA’s 2021 technology briefing at the Bank’s new tech hub at South Eveleigh in Sydney today, Mr Comyn said: “CBA wants to remain Australia’s clear leader in digital banking. We recognise customers are no longer just benchmarking us against other financial institutions. They compare us with the best digital experiences they get from any business in the world. We intend to be at the global forefront of the digital experience, and be the trusted partner at the centre of our customers’ financial lives. 

“Our investment in technology including data, machine learning and artificial intelligence is giving us unique insights into each customer’s individual needs. Customers want more control over their financial affairs, more confidence they can achieve financial goals, and an ability to manage all of their financial life in one place.

“Today we also announced that CBA has applied for accreditation to ingest data under the government’s Open Banking regime. The Consumer Data Right puts customers in control and will be a critical enabler of Australia’s future and the digital economy. We will continue to invest to support it and bring the benefits to CBA’s customers.

“We are moving quickly to build, develop, partner and invest in new services we can integrate into the CommBank app. Our ambition is that our ‘For You’ personalisation function will bring together internal and external services and provide a single place for our customers to receive personalised service, benefits and offers.

“It’s a given that every customer wants their banking to be safe, secure, easy and convenient. But they also want digital tools to help them plan and budget, set goals and achieve them, predict and manage their bills, and achieve their dreams of owning a home, running a business or securing their retirement. They also want to be connected to new services, enabled by digital technology, that enrich their lives.

Mr Comyn said: “Today we also announced the acquisition of Doshii, a cloud platform for the hospitality industry that integrates information from multiple food ordering apps – such as Deliveroo – into one system that consolidates a venue’s point of sale and back end processes into one simple platform.

“Next week also marks the first anniversary of x15ventures, our start-up platform to build new ventures that broaden the range of services we can offer customers from within our app. In the 12 months since launch, x15 has helped launch or scale four new ventures and has now acquired a fifth.

Mr Comyn said new CommBank app services such as the Coronavirus Money Plan and Bill Sense, both budgeting tools launched last year, helped predict customers’ future bills and cash flow so they could budget through the pandemic and more broadly manage their everyday expenditure.

As at the end of last year, more than 400,000 customers had set up a Coronavirus Money Plan since its launch in June 2020, while Bill Sense had around 1.5 million unique users since it launched in September 2020; analysing over 26 million accounts and made nearly 60 million bill predictions daily.

“These are just two examples where we are using data to provide customers with the information they need to make informed choices about how, why and where they use their money,” said Mr Comyn.

Latest digital banking figures

Mr Comyn said CBA had seen record numbers of customers banking digitally:

• 7.5 million customers are now digitally active, an increase of 10 per cent since December 2018;
• 6.3 million customers are using the CommBank app, as at December 2020, up from 5.9 million customers from the same time the year before;
• For the month of December 2020, the number of app log-ins was 216 million, which translated to 6.95 million log-ins per day;
• For the month of December 2020, app transactions per day were 1.7 million, equating to daily transactions of $1 billion;
• Over 6 billion personalised in-app messages were sent to customers in 2020;
• 731 million in-app messages were sent relating to COVID-19 support and information in 2020;
• The Benefits finder service in CommBank app and NetBank has helped customers find more than $150 million annually in federal and state financial benefits with 2.9 million customers visiting the feature since its September 2019 launch and 920,000 claims commenced, of which 615,000 were commenced since COVID-19 began;
• 6.4 million customers received crisis response messages in 2020 for incidents such as bushfires;
• CBA’s BizExpress product has been fast-tracked to help small businesses get immediate access to funding to support and grow their operations as the country looks to recover from the worst effects of the coronavirus pandemic. BizExpress Online is available via NetBank and the CommBank app providing real time decisions and funding of up to $100k for customers in as little as 12 minutes.