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Environmental and social

Reconciliation

We recognise that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians face significant social and financial disadvantage.  So while we aim to promote equality for all Australians, reconciliation is an important part or our investment in our community.


FY23-25 RAP corrections

During a recent review on progress towards implementing our FY23-25 Reconciliation Action Plan, CommBank identified three statements requiring corrections, due to changes in internal processes or because they require clarification to better reflect our practices. The review did not include a re-review as to the accuracy of all other statements in the FY23-25 Reconciliation Action Plan. This will be carried out in 2025 prior to the publication of the FY26-28 Reconciliation Action Plan. The following table outlines the new text and the previous text and the reasons for the changes.

The corrections have been made in consultation with Reconciliation Australia.

Page
New text
Previous text
Reason for change
12
Through our Environment and Social Framework, we expect our Clients, Suppliers and other business partners to identify, manage, monitor, and redress any adverse impacts on human rights where their business is involved. To support this, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risk assessments are required for institutional corporate lending, Business Banking and Commonwealth Private Bank customers with current or proposed commercial or corporate lending greater than or equal to $1.5 million.1 These assessments are performed in one of two ways:
  • The Corporate and Institutional Pathway is used to assess larger Business Banking customers managed in the Major Client Group and Regional and Agribusiness Specialised Agribusiness Solutions segments, and all Institutional corporate lending.
  • The Commercial Pathway is used to assess business banking customers managed in the Commercial Banking, Regional and Agribusiness Banking, Small Business Banking segments, customers in transition from Bankwest Business Bank, as well as customers managed in Commonwealth Private Bank.
The tool is supported by a set of inherent risk ratings across industry ANZSIC codes for ten key focus areas including: climate and energy; climate physical risk; water; pollution; biodiversity; human rights; Indigenous rights; labour rights and modern slavery; workplace health and safety; and anti-corruption and governance. The tool also includes specific questions aimed at assessing whether lending to a customer is aligned to commitments in the E&S Framework.

1Please note, from March 2023, the threshold for completing ESG risk assessments in Business Banking was updated from $1 million to $1.5 million. This may be subject to further change. Since that time, ESG risk assessments have been required as described in the new text above.
Through our Environment and Social Framework, we expect our Clients, Suppliers and other business partners to identify, manage, monitor, and redress any adverse impacts on human rights where their business is involved. To support this outcome, we perform Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risk assessments on institutional corporate lending and business customers with proposed corporate lending greater than $1 million.   These assessments are performed in one of two ways:
  • The Corporate and Institutional Pathway (business corporate lending greater than $30 million and institutional corporate lending).
  • The Commercial Pathway (business corporate lending between $1 million and $30 million).
The ESG risk assessment tool is supported by a dataset of initial risk ratings across key focus areas, including climate and energy; climate physical risk; water; pollution; biodiversity; human rights; labour rights and modern slavery; workplace health and safety; and anti-corruption and governance. The ESG risk assessment tool is integrated into the Bank’s corporate loan pricing system to embed it as part of the corporate lending decision process. 
Since we released our RAP in October 2022, changes have been made to our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Risk Assessment process.
16
Over the last three years, we have increased the unique completion rate of cultural capability from 8 per cent during FY20, to 56 per cent during FY22.
Over the last three years, we have increased the unique completion rate of cultural capability from 8.4 per cent during FY20, to over 62 per cent during FY22.
To determine our training completion rate for Indigenous cultural development, we use Australian Headcount as the denominator. In our 2024 Annual Report, we restated all prior periods to exclude other overseas and service providers from the training completion data to align with this reporting criteria.
23
Review relevant international standards related to the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and embed within our Supplier Code of Conduct.
Review relevant international standards related to the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and embed within our Supplier Code of Conduct and procurement practices.
We have a current commitment to review relevant international standards related to the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and embed within our Supplier Code of Conduct and procurement practices. 

We have reviewed relevant international standards related to the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Our refreshed SCOC will be published in FY25 and will include an expectation that our suppliers, domestically and globally, respect the rights of Indigenous people. We do not believe embedding this aspect of the SCOC into our procurement practices will lead to meaningful outcomes. We will continue to focus on strengthening our supplier diversity program.

Governance