Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) today provided its latest update on its ongoing review of entitlements for current and former employees, commenced in early 2018. This follows updates provided to employees and key stakeholders progressively since the review began.
The review has examined pay and a broad range of entitlements for current and former full time, part time and casual employees back to 2010.
To date, CBA has notified or repaid approximately 41,000 current and former employees with $13.2m of back-pay plus interest. CBA will commence payments of a further $14.9m plus interest next week. Where applicable, leave balances have been increased and additional superannuation contributions paid.
The review is substantially complete and will be finalised this financial year. CBA expects the remaining payments to be approximately $25m plus interest.
CBA Chief Executive Officer Matt Comyn said today:
"It is unacceptable that some of our people were not paid the correct entitlements. This should never have happened and I apologise to anyone impacted by these past errors. Our priority is to complete the payments with interest and, where applicable, superannuation."
The review includes determining whether applicable entitlements have been correctly provided to employees. It also involves an assessment of earnings paid to employees compared to relevant enterprise and industry awards, using their actual work patterns.
CBA has financially provided for the issue, having raised a provision during the 2017-18 financial year, based on best estimates.
A separate review was undertaken to ascertain accountability and a range of consequences were applied in the 2017-18 financial year.
CBA self-reported the review to the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) in February this year and has provided information to the FWO on the progress of the review. As previously disclosed, the FWO is conducting an investigation into the matter and CBA is co-operating with this process.
CBA will provide a final update following the completion of its review.
