Several News Corp Australia outlets today carried a story with significant factual errors in relation to charges Commonwealth Bank customers pay to receive bank statements. These errors are causing our customers grief and we'd like to set the record straight.

The story implies Commonwealth Bank will charge millions of its customers a fee to receive paper statements. The fact is that all our customers currently receive at least two paper statements per year free of charge. The proposed change is to charge $2.50 per paper statement but only if a customer requests to receive more frequent statements.

The article exaggerates the impact of the change by claiming millions of customers will be affected. In fact, we anticipate less than 1 per cent of our customers will request a paper statement more than twice a year. 

The article also inflates the impact on older customers when we have explicitly made clear that pensioner accounts are exempt from charges and we have also exempted youth accounts and customers with special needs.  Any customers with special circumstances and needs can also speak to our staff who can waive the charge.