No place for banks in schools
COMMBANK CO chief Matt Comyn Co is sorry...
He’s sorry his insurance gu guys ripped off terminally ill pa parents who took out life in insurance with the bank.
He’s sorry his financial ad advisers ripped off retirees fo for millions of dollars with fra fraudulent advice.
He’s sorry the bank ripped of off dead customers, by ch charging advice fees for no se service.
And now he’s sorry that his bank teller staff scammed schoolkids’ Dollarmites accounts.
You’ve got to hand it to the CBA — their fraud has a kind of circle of life to it, right?
This week we learned that thousands of children’s Dollarmites accounts were fraudulently manipulated by CBA staff, so they could earn bonuses and meet aggressive sales targets. Hang on a minute! Why would the bank link sales incentives to those cute-looking little Dollarmite accounts?
Because their Dollarmites program is easily the most successful marketing campaign in Australian history. In fact, one analyst has suggested Dollarmites was worth an astounding $10 billion to the bank. How? Simple. The CBA pays schools a token kickback for signing up students. Yet it’s chicken feed for acquiring a long-term customer. Especially when CHOICE magazine says that 35 per cent of those Dollarmites end up staying with the CBA.
For well over a decade I’ve been calling out the Dollarmites program. Having Australia’s largest issuer of credit cards teaching kids about money is like having Ronald McDonald teaching kids about nutrition.
Besides, the Dollarmite Youthsaver accounts’ terms and conditions are rubbish. Parents would be better off saving for their kids in a high interest online savings account, and throwing their edu-marketing in the bin.
Look, I’ve dedicated my life to delivering independent financial education, and I can tell you that kids don’t learn much from Dollarmites’ cute cartoon mascots like ‘Cred’, who rides a skateboard and is ‘a real cool dude’. Rather, it’s when Cred morphs into a credit card, and is mailed out to fresh-faced 18 year old cool dudes, that their real education begins.
There are well over 500,000 kids who are unwittingly enrolled into the CBA’s marketing database.
As parents, it’s time for us to tell the Commbank that their sleazy circle of life has to stop right now:
It’s time to ban Commbank from our classrooms.
Sorry, not sorry.