“We have to make sure we’re not allowing or seeing too many or too large cross subsidies generated over time,” he said. “We want to maintain competitiveness in all of those markets and do a great job for our customers,but also make a sustainable return.”
Earlier this year,the bank vowed to keep allCBA regional branches open until at least the end of 2026. One issue,Comyn said,was that customers tended to stay with banks even when branches were closed.
While there was sometimes a temporary reduction in customer satisfaction,it tended to recover after 12 months,he said,with about 95 per cent of customers not choosing to change financial institutions following a branch closure.
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“I hope that isn’t true because then our decision to persist with a much larger footprint in regional Australia over the next three years,commercially won’t be a good one,” he said.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority previously said regional and remote branch numbers across the industry fell by 29 per cent in the five years to June 2022 – a net decline of 677 branches.
Westpac chief executive Peter King said competition for customers in banking was intense and that the bank sometimes had to make difficult decisions on legacy branch locations that were underutilised. “Customers who only use a branch represent about 3 per cent of our 13 million customers,” he said.