Comyn calls for honesty about AI's workforce impact as CBA backs a $90 million reskilling program
Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief executive Matt Comyn has warned that artificial intelligence will result in job losses across the bank and the broader economy, saying that avoiding the conversation leaves workers worse off.
Writing in the AFR ahead of CBA's first Accelerate AI conference in Sydney – where Comyn will interview OpenAI founder Sam Altman – Comyn addressed the workforce consequences of AI directly.
"At CBA, as in many large organisations, some work will be done by smaller teams," he wrote. "At the same time, some career paths will steepen as people use AI to take on more complex work sooner. This will create opportunities for many people, but it will be demanding for everyone. Pretending otherwise does not protect workers. It only ensures they are surprised later."
Comyn acknowledged the human cost of that change. "When a role disappears, it affects a household budget, a mortgage, a career plan and, for many people, a sense of identity," he wrote, adding that "pretending every role can be preserved would not be fair either."
CBA has backed its position with a $90 million Future Workforce Program, with Comyn outlining commitments to early visibility into how work is changing, investment in reskilling, internal mobility and support for workers where roles are reduced or eliminated.
The bank is investing $2.4 billion annually in technology and capability – at least $500 million more each year than other major Australian banks, according to Comyn.
He drew a clear distinction between using AI to build a stronger organisation and using it purely to cut costs. "AI should help lift productivity in ways that improve customer and employee experiences faster, strengthen risk management and make work more valuable,” he wrote.
AI in lending
CBA is also introducing new AI-enabled services for retail and business customers in the coming months, including agentic systems already being used for fraud detection, security patching and technology problem-solving.
Comyn said workers who combine customer understanding, risk judgment and the ability to direct AI systems would become more valuable over time. "Our job is to help more people get there," he wrote.
On the broader national picture, Comyn argued that productivity was "the clearest path to lifting real wages and living standards over time," and that poorly deployed AI risked leaving value and capability flowing offshore.
“AI will not deliver a better future for Australia by accident,” he wrote. “We have to choose it and build it through safeguards that work, people ready to use the tools, strong global partnerships and more capability created here. At CBA, that is the path we are taking. We will certainly not get everything right. But the bigger mistake would be to let caution become delay and miss the chance to build the skills of our people, a stronger company and a more capable Australia.”
