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• Published on 29 November 2023
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Commonwealth Bank transforms digital banking for retail and business

Commonwealth Bank has provided an update on its strategy to reimagine the banking experience for its retail and business customers as they increasingly adopt and use its leading digital banking services.

The launch of CommBank app v5 in May 2023 delivered more personalised content and dynamic navigation making Australia’s most popular banking app simpler, better and easier to use. The bank today outlined the customer response to date:

• More than 300,000 additional customers have started using the app, taking total unique users from 7.8 million (in June 2023) to 8.1 million (in October 2023);
• Daily log-ins to the app have increased to more than 11 million per day – annualised this equates to four billion log-ins per year, which is one billion (33%) more than the number of log-ins seen over the prior year;
• The average app customer now logs in 41 times a month, with 20 to 29 year olds doing so almost twice a day (51 log-ins per month), and over 65s using the app almost every day (24 log-ins per month);
• Customers are engaging with the app’s money management features more than three million times a month;
• Customers now use the app to process around $2.5 billion in payments a day (up 23% year-on-year);
• Business customers using the profile switch feature are spending 20% more time on the app; and
• The CommBank app now accounts for almost a quarter of all new CommSec accounts opened.

Matt Comyn, CEO, Commonwealth Bank, said: “The new functionality, design and addition of new services, such as CommSec share trading and our CommBank Yello customer recognition programme, have proved very popular with our record number of digitally-active customers.

“Investing in products, services and experiences that our customers want is critical to our strategy of building tomorrow’s bank today. As the trusted partner of one in three Australians and a quarter of all businesses, our clear goal is to strengthen and deepen the relationships with all of our customers. We want all customers to feel recognised and see unique value from banking with us.”

CBA also provided an update on CommBank Yello and Kit, as well as launching two new business bank services.

CommBank Yello

CommBank Yello is now one of Australia’s largest customer recognition programmes with eligibility extended to eight million customers in November 2023. An Australian banking first, CommBank Yello’s comprehensive programme provides a range of cashbacks, discounts and prize draws, as well as unique experiences, including:

• Exclusive offers from 75 different brands that the bank is partnering with, including THE ICONIC and steaming services; and
• Up to 175 different offers across various sectors including retail, hospitality and entertainment.

The programme helps the bank provide approximately $400 million in value back to customers each year.

“CommBank Yello recognises our customers for what they do today and rewards them as they do more banking with us. It will play a central role in driving even deeper relationships by transferring more value and personalised offers back to our customers the more they bank with us,” said Comyn.

Kit

Kit, the money-mastering app for kids, built by CommBank, is now being scaled after a period of testing and development and already has 36,000 kids, parents and carers using the app. Initial usage has already shown that compared to the general population, Kit users:

• Are 14% more likely to earn money on their own through chores;
• Have more frequent conversations about money (8% increase); and
• Demonstrated up to a 14% uplift in financial capability and knowledge.

Because young people are more motivated to learn when the experience is fun, Kit has now added new innovative learning techniques to its app to help teach kids new financial concepts, such as how to spot a scam. Since introducing these new techniques, the completion rate of Kit's learning content has increased from 22% to almost 80% (77%).

Business Banking

Digital engagement continues to increase following the introduction of profile switching in app v5, which allows retail and business customers to switch seamlessly between their personal and business accounts. Active customers using this feature are spending 20% more time in the app.

Digital services have been increasingly responsible for the opening of nearly 1,000 new business transaction accounts every day in the first quarter of FY24 (74,000 accounts between 1 July and 30 September 2023, an increase of 23% year-on-year).

As of September 2023, CBA has more than 1.3 milllion business transaction accounts, up 9% on a year ago. Almost 1,000 new merchant facilities have been opened every week in the first quarter of FY24, an increase of 25% year-on-year.

Business lending continues to outpace system growth, up 40 bps (12% year-on-year) with $2.2 billion in funding in the first quarter of FY24 alone. The Business Bank’s dedicated online lending platform, Biz Express, has seen the value of its loans funded ($676 million) double over the past 12 months and nearly two out of three small business loans are now generated through the platform.

The Business Bank has today announced:

• Smart real estate payments - a market-leading real estate payments solution which will reduce administrative burdens and improve the customer experience when making, collecting and reconciling rental payments; and
• A strategic collaboration for the agriculture sector with the winner of this year’s x15 Xccelerate startup programme, Pairtree Intelligence. Pairtree reduces complexity for farmers by providing seamless integrations with 100+ leading AgTech companies. It combines data from previously incompatible digital sources to provide reporting and insights to agribusinesses, government and researchers.

Technology and AI developments

With more customers using digital services, CBA is scaling its technology capabilities to meet customer demand and support a new level of personalisation.

The bank’s technology is scaling to support:

• An additional one billion annual CommBank app log-ins;
• A 23% year-on-year increase in app-initiated transactions; and
• The processing of 3,500 transactions per second at peak times.

AI, fraud and scams

CBA is now investing more than $750 million a year to protect customers from financial crime, cyber threats and fraud, and AI is playing an increasingly important role on this front.

As a result of this investment, the bank’s technology defences:

• Scan 360,000 interactions per second with detection logic;
• Took down 2,275 phishing sites in the last financial year; and
• Drove a 70% reduction in cryptocurrency investment scams as a result of new holds, declines and limits being put in place.

In AI, the bank has seen significant developments over recent months with:

• More than 50 different AI use cases implemented;
• 50,000 lines of AI generated code submitted into production;
• AI powered tiles in the app delivering 50% higher engagement vs non-AI ones.

As a result of this investment and focus on AI, CommBank has debuted at number one in the Evident Global AI Rankings for Asia Pacific and number six globally – the only Australian bank to rank in the top 30.

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker