The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has paused a proposed plan, announced on Tuesday, to charge a $3 assisted cash withdrawal fee for customers who currently hold a legacy transaction account.

CBA on Tuesday announced that it would automatically transition customers who currently hold a ‘Complete Access’ account (a product which is no longer sold by the bank and expected to be phased out) to a “newer” ‘Smart Access’ transaction account, CommBank’s most widely held retail transaction account.

The conversion, which was set to begin from 6 January next year, would mean these former Complete Access customers would now be charged a $3 fee to withdraw cash at bank branches, using the Australia Post Bank@Post service, or through telephone banking, which is a condition of the Smart Access account. Currently, customers with a Complete Access account are not charged a fee for assisted or in-branch cash withdrawals.

Customers of both Smart Access and Complete Access accounts, however, are not charged a fee for withdrawing cash from ATMs.

In response to widespread public backlash at the imposed fee, CBA called a snap media conference on Wednesday where it declared a six month pause on account conversions.

CBA group executive retail banking services Angus Sullivan conceded that communications regarding the conversion of these accounts to the Smart Access product – which the bank says would deliver material benefits for the vast majority of existing Complete Access customers – was executed poorly by the bank.

For instance, the conversion of these accounts would see the monthly account fee drop from $6 (with Complete Access) to $4 (with Smart Access).

“We have done a poor job of communicating this change to our customers. We are particularly conscious of the impact any change to planned fees and charges can have at this time of year, especially given the cost of living pressures our customers face,” he said.

CBA claims that approximately 90 per cent of Complete Access customers – those reported not to use assisted withdrawal – would “be better off or the same” following their conversion to a Smart Access account.

“If those customers don’t want to move, they can contact us to discuss their options,” the bank said.

For the remaining 10 per cent of Complete Access customers (approximately over 100,000 customers) who do use the assisted withdrawal feature, CBA said it will “change its approach” and, at least for now, pause the migration.

“Instead, we will contact these customers over the next six months to discuss the most appropriate product for them given their needs.”

CBA counts more than 10 million retail customers in Australia, of which it says more than nine million do not hold a Complete Access account.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) labelled the “partial backflip” by the bank as “offensive”, calling on the bank to scrap the changes for good.

“Claiming it’s a pause for six months is also not an appropriate response,” FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said in a statement.

GenAI takes centre stage

Meanwhile, CBA late last week also outlined the material successes being realised after the deployment of generative AI (GenAI) technologies across the bank’s customer service channels. Among these wins include a nearly one-third (30 per cent) reduction in customer-reported frauds following the introduction of Gen AI-powered suspicious transaction alerts.

“CBA processes and analyses more than 20 million payments a day. With the aid of Gen AI, the bank is now flagging thousands of transactions that look suspicious and sending 20,000 proactive warning alerts per day to retail customers via the app.”

The bank said it will now scale the service by more than 40 per cent, delivering upwards of 35,000 proactive alerts a day.

CBA also touted the introduction of its GenAI-backed customer-facing messaging services –  “one of only a few banks globally to have taken this step”, it said – which has led to a 40 per cent reduction in call centre wait times over the last financial year.

“Messaging is a service channel increasingly popular with retail customers who use it to make more than 50,000 enquiries a day – a five-fold increase on usage five years ago.

“The introduction of new machine learning technologies, including Gen AI, into CBA’s messaging infrastructure is expected to increase the speed, quality, and precision of responses customers get and help resolve the 10 per cent of enquiries the messaging platform cannot currently answer.”

Gen AI-powered messaging will also be introduced to support CBA’s business customers.

“The messaging service will help tens of thousands of business customers make payments faster, transact with confidence, and save time and effort, as the chatbot serves up immediate, real-time responses to enquiries.”

Committing to the safe and ethical rollout of AI technologies, CBA said it has implemented 11 guardrails to protect its models from risks related to malicious inputs and misleading outputs.