ASIC Alleges a 10-Employee Payroll Run Was Charged 12 Fees. The $26.4m Already Repaid Is What Lands in the Statements You Underwrite

ASIC went to the Federal Court on Wednesday with a claim about a fee most brokers have never heard of and many of their business clients have been paying for years. The case is about a bank’s terms and conditions. The part that matters for your files is the bank statement.

On 12 November 2026, ASIC announced it had commenced civil penalty proceedings against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia over fee disclosure on CommBiz, CBA’s online banking platform for business customers. ASIC alleges the CommBiz terms and conditions were misleading because they did not clearly and accurately disclose all of the fees charged for Direct Debit and Direct Credit payments. CBA has said it accepts it did not get things right for CommBiz customers and has apologised, while also indicating it expects to defend certain aspects of the claim. Nothing has been proven, and the matter had not been listed for a case management hearing at the time of writing.

For brokers, the interesting question is not who wins. It is what this says about the data you underwrite commercial and SME files from — and about which rulebook actually protects a business client when something on their account does not add up.

What ASIC alleges

According to ASIC’s media release (26-279MR), CommBiz customers were told they would pay a fee for a payment made to or from a third-party account. ASIC alleges CBA also charged an undisclosed fee — described in the release as a “contra leg” fee — for the matching movement of money into or out of the customer’s own CommBiz account.

On ASIC’s numbers, between November 2020 and 31 May 2025 about 42,000 CommBiz customers were overcharged about $8.5 million. ASIC further alleges the misleading terms were in place from CommBiz’s launch in 2006, and that the overcharging occurred over about 19 years. The release also alleges CBA received customer complaints from at least 2015, and that a 2016 internal audit identified Direct Debit fee overcharging and required corrective action. ASIC alleges governance failures meant the misleading statements were not identified or corrected, and that CBA did not act efficiently, honestly and fairly.

ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said: “We allege Commonwealth Bank broke a basic promise to its business customers.” He added that the action “should serve as a warning to banks that failing to get the basics right will attract ASIC attention.”

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

The release also sets out what CBA has already done. CBA temporarily stopped charging the fees in June 2025 and amended the CommBiz terms in August 2025. Since February 2026 it has waived the contra leg fees for Direct Debits and Direct Credits. And it has completed a remediation program covering 1 December 2006 to the present, paying more than $26.4 million to about 93,000 current and past customers — including about 40,000 small businesses. ASIC says affected customers who have not been remediated should contact CBA.

Why a business-banking case lands on a broker’s desk

Brokers writing commercial, SME and cash-flow finance do not assess serviceability from a payslip. They assess it from transaction data: six or twelve months of business bank statements, average monthly credits, the rhythm of the trading account. That is the raw material. This case says two things about it.

The first is that a fee line in a business statement is not always self-explaining. If a bank’s own terms did not disclose a fee it was charging — which is what ASIC alleges here — then a client who tries to reconcile their statement against their terms cannot do it, and neither can you. ASIC’s payroll example shows why that is more than a rounding issue: the number of fees charged exceeded the number of payments made. A cost that scales with transaction count in a way the terms do not predict is a cost you cannot normalise with a rule of thumb.

The second is larger, and it is the one to act on.

The $26.4 million that lands in a trading account

Remediation money has to go somewhere. On ASIC’s account, more than $26.4 million has been paid to about 93,000 current and past customers, roughly 40,000 of them small businesses, across a period running from December 2006 to the present.

Those payments arrive in business transaction accounts as one-off credits. And a one-off credit that is not trading income is exactly the entry that distorts the picture a broker builds from statements.

Consider what a credit like that does to the metrics commonly used on SME and cash-flow files. Average monthly credits rise. Turnover appears stronger than trading supports. A seasonal dip gets smoothed over by money that has nothing to do with sales. If the assessment is built on average monthly deposits — as a good deal of non-bank and cash-flow lending is — an unidentified remediation credit inflates the very number the facility is sized against.

This cuts both ways, and both ways matter commercially:

• Overstated capacity. A client’s file looks better than the business is. If that drives the facility size, the client carries a repayment the trading account was never generating.
• An unexplained credit at assessment. Lenders ask about unusual credits. A broker who cannot explain a lump sum invites a condition, a request for further information, or a decline — on a file that was otherwise clean.

The rulebook that does not travel with you

Here is where brokers diversifying into commercial work can get caught, and it has nothing to do with this case specifically.

The consumer credit framework most brokers work in every day attaches to a defined category of credit. Section 5(1) of the National Credit Code applies the Code where the debtor is a natural person or strata corporation and the credit is provided wholly or predominantly for personal, domestic or household purposes, or to purchase, renovate or improve residential property for investment purposes (or to refinance credit provided for those purposes), among other conditions.

A business transaction account and a business-purpose facility sit outside that. Which means the machinery brokers know best does not come with them. The best interests duty in section 158LA of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 — “the licensee must act in the best interests of the consumer in relation to the credit assistance” — is framed around credit assistance for regulated credit contracts. The preliminary assessment obligations sit in the same regulated space.

So when an SME client asks “can the bank actually do that?”, the answer does not come from the responsible lending framework. It comes from general conduct obligations of the kind ASIC has invoked here, and from the Banking Code of Practice.

Two Banking Code levers worth knowing

The Banking Code of Practice, effective from 28 February 2025, applies to subscribing banks’ dealings with individuals and small businesses. Two paragraphs are directly useful in a conversation about unexplained fees.

Paragraph 15(a) requires that the contract documents clearly set out “details of fees and charges, their amounts (if ascertainable), and how often they are debited.” That is the standard a client is entitled to expect today — and it is a reasonable place to start when a client cannot find a fee in their terms.

Paragraph 22 requires the bank, within 30 days of a request, to give the customer a copy of documents in its possession, including the contract (with terms and conditions, standard fees and charges and interest rates) and statements of account. For a broker reconstructing an SME client’s position, that is a documented pathway to the paperwork — and it does not depend on goodwill.

Whether those protections apply at all turns on the Code’s own small business test. A business customer is a “Small Business” under the Code if the customer, or its business group, had an annual turnover of less than $10 million in the previous financial year, has fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees, and has less than $5 million in total debt to all credit providers — excluding debt to which the National Credit Code applies, and including undrawn amounts under existing loans and any loan being applied for.

What to review this week

A short pass over the commercial files currently on your desk:

1. Scan for lump sums. On every set of business statements in an active file, identify any one-off credit that does not match the trading pattern. Ask the client what it was. Note the answer on file.
2. Exclude what is not revenue. If a credit is a remediation payment, a refund, a tax refund, an insurance settlement or an owner contribution, take it out of turnover and average monthly credits before you size anything.
3. Look at the fee lines. Count the transaction fees against the number of payments in a payroll cycle. If the counts do not match, that is a question for the bank, not an assumption for your spreadsheet.
4. Run the small business test. Turnover, headcount and total debt — including the facility you are arranging. Know before you advise whether the Code applies to your client.
5. Use paragraph 22 rather than chasing. If a client cannot produce terms, standard fees and charges, or statements, there is a documented request pathway with a 30-day timeframe.
6. Point CommBiz clients at ASIC’s statement. ASIC says customers affected but not yet remediated should contact CBA. That is a call the client makes, and a reason for you to make contact.

There is a commercial point here that has nothing to do with compliance. Most brokers struggle to find a non-salesy reason to call an SME client between transactions. “I was reading your statements and I want to check what this credit was” is a better opener than any newsletter, because it demonstrates the thing brokers claim and rarely prove: that someone is actually reading the file.

Brokers who diversify successfully into commercial work tend to do it on exactly this ground — not by learning more products, but by being the person who reads the client’s numbers more carefully than the client does.

What to watch next

The proceedings are at the start, not the end. No case management hearing had been listed when ASIC announced the action, and CBA has signalled it expects to defend certain aspects of the claim. The outcome will take time.

The signal is clearer than the timeline. Kirkland framed the action as a warning to banks about “failing to get the basics right” — and fee disclosure in business banking is a basic. Brokers should expect more attention on what business customers are told they will pay, and should assume that the statements they underwrite from may contain corrections, waivers and remediation credits as that attention plays out.

Sources: ASIC media release 26-279MR, “ASIC sues Commonwealth Bank alleging tens of thousands of business customers overcharged fees” (12 November 2026); National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth), s 158LA and the National Credit Code (Schedule 1), s 5(1), as in force 1 July 2026; Australian Banking Association, Banking Code of Practice, effective 28 February 2025, paragraphs 15, 22 and the Small Business test. Court filing details and CBA’s response as reported by the ABC, 12 November 2026.