CBA to show customers their carbon footprint

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has announced a new program that will provide its customers with a personalised carbon footprint tracker based on their spending data. 

The move, said to be a “first” for Australian banking, comes as a result of CBA’s partnership with CoGo – a fintech company that tracks transaction behaviours to provide a “real-time carbon output” figure, as well as offering offset opportunities to reduce that figure.

CoGo has previously partnered with banks that include Westpac New Zealand, Santander and NatWest. 

According to CBA, both the deal and the pilot program for this initiative commenced earlier on Tuesday (5 October), with the latter allowing a select group of retail customers to see their carbon footprint via the bank’s online banking app.

These customers have also been provided a choice to “offset their previous month’s transactions” by purchasing carbon credits (to support green initiatives, such as Australian bushland regeneration). 

The major bank has said that this offering will be available to all of its retail customers in 2022, and that there are intentions to open it to business customers and to introduce a more detailed breakdown, including emissions by month, before moving to segmentation at a category and individual transaction level.

Speaking of the pilot program, Commonwealth Bank Group executive Angus Sullivan said that by combining CBA’s “rich customer data” with “CoGo’s industry-leading capability in measuring carbon outputs”, he believes the big four bank will be able to “provide greater transparency for customers so that they can take actionable steps to reduce their environmental footprint”.

“Our data capability will provide greater personalisation for customers over time, including more granular information about their carbon footprint with the option to offset individual transactions,” Mr Sullivan added.  

CoGo chief executive and founder Ben Gleisner added that he believes businesses and consumers are “looking for greater transparency around their carbon footprint” and that this deal with CBA would not only “empower Australian businesses and consumers to understand their carbon footprint” but encourage ways to mitigate that impact.

The announcement stands as the latest environmentally focused finance initiative employed by the major bank. Last month CBA introduced a commercial property loan upgrade for businesses intending to reduce both operating and environmental costs. 

Less than two months earlier, CBA announced it would begin a national roll-out of its renewable technology-focused loan.

[Related: CBA announces green loan national rollout]