The closure of another Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) branch in Cumberland has been branded “unacceptable” by Council.
Despite the CBA reporting that yearly profits have increased to a record $5.15 billion, Australia’s largest bank has announced it will permanently close the doors on its Guildford branch.
It’s not the first branch to go in the Cumberland Local Government Area (LGA), with Council stating it had been notified of various branch closures by CBA in recent times, including Regents Park, Pendle Hill and Toongabbie.
Calling it a critical matter, Cumberland Mayor Lisa Lake said the closure of the branch will significantly impact Cumberland’s high overseas born population and a high number of recent arrivals to the area.
“In Toongabbie, approximately 60 per cent of households use a language other than English at home, with this number rising to 67 per cent in Pendle Hill and 75 per cent in Guildford,” she said.
“This is significantly greater than the NSW average of 29.5 per cent and it means that the closure of branches will be particularly problematic for the Cumberland community, where many residents rely on over the counter service and access to staff to assist them with their banking needs.”
Lake said the impending closure of the Guildford branch would result in residents who are customers of CBA being forced to travel to either Merrylands or Granville branches to access financial services.
“Accessibility to services locally is critical to people in Cumberland Council,” she said.
“This travel will provide additional barriers to low-income households as well as elderly residents who do not drive.”
Councillor Ola Hamed also added that the branch closure would impact the bank employees, particularly women, who she said face high levels of job insecurity.
“The majority of front line retail banking staff are women, which mean job loss due to branch closures disproportionately impact women, who have much lower job security than their male counterparts,” she said.
“I personally visited the Guildford branch at least three times in the last two months, and each time queues were out the door.”
Cumberland Council will now write to its State and Federal Members of Parliament to seek their support in keeping the branch open. The Council will also seek an inquiry into the effects of bank closures in metropolitan Australia.
“There should be an increased focus on greater accessibility to services within Cumberland by businesses our community relies on, not a deliberate strategy to remove access to key services,” Lake said.
CBA Regional General Manager Irene Rowlands said the bank understood the change may affect the way some of their customers bank and that the Guildford branch team would be available to provide one-on-one assistance until May 12.
“Customer demand at our Guildford branch has progressively declined, with a 45 per cent drop in transactions over the five years before the Coronavirus pandemic,” she said.
“After a recent review, we made the difficult decision to permanently close our Guildford branch.
“We are working closely with our people from Guildford branch to redeploy them to neighbouring branches. There are no job losses as a result of this decision.”
Ellie Busby is a news reporter for Western Sydney Publishing Group. A graduate of the University of Hertfordshire and Western Sydney University, she is a journalism Major. Ellie has worked with Universal Media, The Cova Project and for a range of other organisations. In 2024, Ellie was named Young Writer of the Year at the Mumbrella Publish Awards.