The Customer Owned Banking Code Compliance Committee has published its Annual Report for the 12 months from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023.

Breach reporting

As each year subscribers report breaches and complaints for the previous financial year the 22-23 report is based on breaches reported in 2021-22.

The COBCCC says its work in 2022-23 revealed the continuation of inadequate and poor-quality reporting of breaches and complaints among some customer owned banking institutions. It says that too many subscribers reported zero or very small numbers of breaches and complaints again.

Among the 57 code subscribers, 13 reported no breaches in the 2021-22 financial year.

The COBCCC considers zero breaches to be highly unlikely and questions the adequacy and effectiveness of the monitoring and reporting systems and capabilities of customer owned banking institutions that continually report no breaches.

At 30 June 2023 there were 57 customer owned banking institutions that subscribe to the Code
with 644 branches across Australia.There is strong presence in regional Australia – 7 of the 9 largest subscribers have head offices outside Sydney and Melbourne.

Bank@Post review

In 2022-23, COBCCC began work with the Banking Code Compliance Committee to establish
whether banking services provided by Australia Post on behalf of banks (Bank@Post
arrangements) meet the obligations under the banking Codes.

Thirty-nine customer owned banking institutions offer a range of services through Bank@Post,
including withdrawals, deposits, balance enquiries and barcode business deposits.

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