ASIC Sues CBA Over Hidden Fees as NAB Repays $169 Million

Australia's two banking stories landed on the same Thursday morning, and they point the same way. The corporate regulator sued the Commonwealth Bank, the country's biggest bank, over fees it says 42,000 business customers were never told about. On the same day, National Australia Bank agreed to repay about 169 million Australian dollars to almost 66,000 current and former staff it underpaid over more than a decade.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said it has started civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The case concerns CommBiz, the bank's online platform for business customers, which businesses use to send payments such as wages and to collect payments by direct debit.

What ASIC alleges against CBA

ASIC alleges the CommBiz terms and conditions were misleading because they did not clearly disclose all the fees charged on direct debit and direct credit payments. Customers were told they would pay a fee for each payment to or from a third party account. ASIC says the bank also charged a second fee that was not disclosed, a charge the bank later put at 25 cents plus GST.

The regulator gives a plain example. A small business paying the fortnightly wages of 10 employees from two CommBiz accounts was charged 12 fees: 10 for the payments to its staff, and two more undisclosed fees for the money leaving its own accounts.

ASIC alleges that between November 2020 and May 31, 2025, about 42,000 CommBiz customers were overcharged about 8.5 million Australian dollars. It says the allegedly misleading terms were in place from the launch of CommBiz in 2006, and Europe-based coverage of the Sydney Morning Herald reporting says the bank received complaints in 2015 and identified the problem in an internal audit in 2016. ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said the alleged conduct was a failure by the country's biggest bank to get the basics right over many years. The claims are allegations. The court has not ruled, and no case management hearing has been listed yet.

ASIC is seeking declarations, financial penalties, adverse publicity orders and costs.

The bank has already paid money back. ASIC says CBA stopped charging the fees in June 2025, changed the CommBiz terms in August 2025, and has completed a remediation program covering the period from December 2006 that paid more than 26.4 million dollars to about 93,000 past and current customers, including about 40,000 small businesses. Since February 2026 it has waived the disputed fees on direct debits and direct credits.

The NAB repayment

NAB's case ended without a court. The bank entered an enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman, the workplace regulator, after breaches of the Fair Work Act and of four successive enterprise agreements. Australian reporting of the Ombudsman's figures puts the wage shortfall at 127 million Australian dollars, spread across 65,999 current and former employees, with about 34 million in interest and about 8 million in superannuation taking the total bill to about 169 million.

The underpayments ran for about 14 years, from around 2012. NAB found the problem and reported itself to the Ombudsman in 2019, and a later review found the bank had still not fixed it. The Ombudsman says NAB has already repaid about 155 million dollars, which leaves roughly 14 million still to pay. The bank will also pay 2 million dollars into the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund. An enforceable undertaking is a negotiated settlement: the employer repays workers and commits to compliance steps, and in return faces no court case and no court penalty.

Why it matters

Both cases are about basic systems, not exotic products. One is a fee a business could not see in the terms it signed. The other is payroll software and agreement rules that shorted the bank's own staff for years after the bank knew. For small businesses that bank with CBA, the practical step is to check whether a remediation payment already arrived: the bank's program covers customers back to December 2006. For workers anywhere, the NAB file is the sharper lesson: the repayment took 14 years of underpayment, a self-report in 2019, and a regulator's undertaking in 2026 to close.

Key numbers

CBA customers ASIC says were overcharged: about 42,000. Amount in the ASIC claim period: about 8.5 million Australian dollars. CBA remediation already paid: more than 26.4 million dollars to about 93,000 customers. NAB staff affected: 65,999. NAB wage shortfall: 127 million Australian dollars, about 169 million with interest and superannuation. NAB amount already repaid: about 155 million dollars.

What happens next

The CBA case moves to the Federal Court, where the bank will answer the allegations and the court will decide whether penalties follow the money already repaid. The NAB undertaking will be watched for its compliance steps and for the last 14 million dollars reaching former staff who are hardest to trace.