Banking Code of Practice doesn’t need extending: COBA


The Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA) has hit out against the Australian Banking Association’s (ABA’s) suggestion to extend the Customer Owned Banking Code of Practice (COBCOP) to mutual banks and credit unions that aren’t ABA members, saying that that Code already provides consumers with enough protection.
COBA CEO, Michael Lawrence, said it was “ironic” that major banks were lecturing credit unions and building societies about consumer protection, and customer-owned banking institutions objected to any suggestion that their record of putting customers first was somehow inferior to the track record of the major banks.
“The success of our model is demonstrated by our sector’s consistently superior performance on measures of trust and loyalty,” said Lawrence. “The customer-owned banking sector’s performance on the Roy Morgan Research Net Promoter Score scale is in a completely different ballpark from the major banks.”
Lawrence highlighted that the major banks were at minus six as compared to the customer-owned sector, which sat at plus 26, and while the customer-owned sector was profit-making, it wasn’t profit-maximising.
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