SME Bank of the Year 2025 nominee: Commonwealth Bank of Australia
We are introducing the nominees for the SME Bank of the Year award. This category aims to acknowledge and applaud banks that demonstrate exceptional efforts in catering to the requirements of small and medium-sized enterprises.
We are guided by our purpose – building a brighter future for all. Our strategy, to build tomorrow's bank today for our customers, reflects our commitment to use the strength of CBA to support our customers, invest in our communities and provide strength and stability for the broader economy.
We are one of the leading banks in Australia, serving more than 17 million customers. We focus on providing retail and commercial banking services predominantly in Australia, and in New Zealand through our subsidiary, ASB.
Our products and services are provided through our divisions, Retail Banking Services, Business Banking, Institutional Banking and Markets, and ASB New Zealand.
How would you describe your bank’s role in the SMEs business journey considering their importance in the economy?
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is the leading provider of banking services to the SME market in Australia. Today, more than 1 in 4 Australian businesses consider CBA to be their Main Financial Institution. Our role is ensuring SMEs have access to the vast suite of products and services they require to start, run, grow and protect their business. This ranges from transaction banking, tools for managing finances and growing their business, in-store and eCommerce payments solutions and lending. We provide our products and services to this important segment through a range of channels to meet their needs - locally-based bankers, phone-based specialists and ensuring it is simple and easy to meet needs online through world-class digital experiences.
Why do you think your bank deserves to be awarded the SME Bank of the Year?
We recognise how vital SMEs are to the Australian economy and supporting Australian SMEs is incredibly important to us. In Australia, small businesses comprise around 97 per cent of all businesses and contribute almost one third of the country's total GDP. They employ around 5.4 million people, approximately 42 per cent of the private sector workforce. As a customer-focused organisation, CBA is committed to leading on customer advocacy (as measured through Net Promoter Score). We do this through continued digital innovation and a full-service offering, product innovation which gives customers more control and flexibility over their money, investment in scam and fraud prevention, which leads to continued leadership in market share.
Briefly highlight the top three projects or achievements your bank has delivered for SME customers in the past 18 months.
1. Speeding up lending: CBA understands that accessing lending can be a pain point for many small businesses and we have invested to ensure we can provide credit to customers quickly and safely. CBA is responsibly using to AI to help small business customers, speeding up the application and review process for loans to enable conditional approval in less than 10 minutes. Our BizExpress online platform allows us to review, approve and fund loans quickly and at scale. Today 68% of all loans to small businesses are funded through the BizExpress online platform. In addition, by deploying AI to generate and automate many of our processes, we’ve slashed the Bank Guarantee process from 3 weeks to less than 20 minutes. For annual reviews, the introduction of AI is expected to reduce the exercise from around 16 hours to 1.5 hours. As a result of safely leveraging new technologies and sustained investment in scalable solutions, our lending to small business in the 6 months from July – December 2024 increased by 7% compared to July – December 2023.
2. Customer experience: For 17 or the last 18 months, CBA has maintained the #1 Net Promoter Score (NPS) position for Small Businesses amongst the major banks in Australia. The Small Business Banking team has implemented a number of initiatives to maintain lead amongst competitor set including:
- Proactive customer contact: CBA places a high priority on proactively connecting with customers to ensure we are meeting their banking needs. We do this via multiple channels: in-app digital messaging, email and via our bankers. In Q2 FY25, the SBB team achieved a new record for number of proactive customer interactions. While Small Business Customers usually do not have a dedicated relationship-manager, CBA creates a relationship-managed experience through regular calling days and physical visits where possible as well as tailored 1:1 marketing communications. Given the economic challenges SMEs have faced over the last few years, and knowing how hard it is to run a small business, last year we proactively reached out to hundreds of thousands of small business customers to offer a financial health check and a conversation around any other banking needs they might have.
- Market-leading digital experience: Free comprehensive cash flow tracking capabilities via a Business Cash Flow tool in the CommBank app, which offers monthly summaries of incoming and outgoing cash flow, month-by-month breakdowns and real-time transaction history to help small businesses easily track their finances. We also have an app feature called Bill Sense that predicts future bills to help customers and a free business insights tool called Daily IQ which provides customers with actionable insights to help grow their business based on transaction and demographic data.
- Partnership with Smiling Mind – a not-for-profit mental health organisation focused on building mental fitness skills, to provide small business owners with access to mental wellbeing programs, tools and preventative strategies in maintaining their mental health. The partnership makes resources accessible in the Smiling Mind app and is accessible to everyone.
- Cash Flow Management course: Partnership with University of NSW Sydney to deliver a Cash Flow Management course tailored specifically for small businesses to help educate them about potential cash flow strategies.
- Cyber Wardens: partnered with the Council of Small Business of Australia and Telstra to launch the Cyber Wardens course to help upskill Australian small businesses in cyber protection, and scams awareness. This course has since received endorsement and funding from the Federal Government.
3. Protecting customers from scams and fraud: In 1H25, we invested $450m to protect our customers from fraud, scams, financial and cybercrime. Across the Group, fraud and scam losses have more than halved. We have prevented $650m in mistaken and scam payments with NameCheck technology since July 2023. NameCheck technology is an Australian-banking first and CBA has now expanded this technology to other trusted organisations and financial institutions, including JP Morgan, Bendigo Bank, Teachers Mutual Bank, Eftsure and Satori Assured, to name a few.
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