Bank Under Fire
Newcastle Herald
Saturday September 20, 2003
THE Commonwealth Bank plans to collate the details of 10million customers across its various entities to give staff instant access to their full financial records.
While the Finance Sector Union was left reeling yesterday over news that the bank would slash 3700 jobs, civil libertarians were assessing a separate plan that would place bank customers under an unprecedented level of financial scrutiny.
The plan would mean separate arms of the bank's operations such as term deposits, home loans, superannuation policies and insurance
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Jobs slashed under CBA plan for future scrutiny
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which have in the past acted in isolation would share information on each customer.
Commonwealth Bank spokesman Steve Cookson said the centralised database would give staff a ``better picture" of customers' overall relationships with the bank.
Customer credit risk information would continue to be accessed in line with ``sound business practice".
``It is a much better customer relationship management system whereby the information the customer provides to us is kept in an easily retrievable form no matter where it is needed inside the bank," Mr Cookson said.
Council for Civil Liberties vice-president David Bernie said the building of such databases raised privacy concerns, particularly if high levels of information were accessed unnecessarily.
Mr Bernie said the bank information should not be shared with outside organisations.
``We would be concerned if just any teller could access a client's full financial history, because both in government and in business there has been concerns about and cases where people have accessed information for improper purposes," he said.
Finance Sector Union spokeswoman Grianne Murphy said she believed it was part of a bank push to market other financial services products to customers.
The database push was overshadowed yesterday as the union and bank workers focused on the news that 3700 Commonwealth Bank jobs would be axed over three years.
The union said while it did not expect the cuts would affect their members in the Hunter it would affect customer service.
The bank will pare its domestic workforce of 33,000 as part of a revamp of its customer service operations.
The cuts were part of the CBA"s ``Which new bank" service transformation it claimed would improve customer service response by 20 to 50per cent.
An extra $620million would be spent in key areas of staff training, systems and process simplification and technology.
The bank would also invest $260million over three years in its branch network.
CBA chief executive officer David Murray argued meeting customer needs would be the focal point for change.
Finance Sector Union NSW president Peter Presdee said the majority of job cuts would come from head office.
``At this stage we don't know exactly where the jobs are going from, but we don't expect many cuts in the Hunter where most staff are in branches or call centres," he said.
The union said the CBA wanted fewer staff serving more customers to allow bank executives to collect big bonuses, but branches were already struggling with depleted staff levels.
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© 2003 Newcastle Herald
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