ABA CEO Simon Birmingham interview on FiveAA Breakfast

E&OE 
Radio Interview 
FiveAA Breakfast  
18 November 2025 

Topics: Major banks to front House Economic committee; Scams and Meta; Concept of 50-year mortgage 

Host: Well, the bosses of the big four banks have made their annual pilgrimage to Canberra to be quizzed by politicians on a range of issues that will go to employment, lending practices, scams and so forth. Simon Birmingham is the CEO of the Australian Banking Association, and joins us on FIVEaa breakfast now, Simon, good morning to you. 

Simon Birmingham (Guest): Good morning guys. Good to be with you.  

Host: Great to have you on Birmo, this must be some deja vu for you hopping on a plane to go to Canberra to this time, be on the receiving end of the grilling, as opposed to leading it. 

Simon Birmingham: Well, it’s the four Big Four bank CEOs, so Commonwealth, NAB, Westpac, ANZ, all front up over these two days into the House of Reps Economics Committee. So, I’ve had plenty of experience of both answering questions as a minister and thinking about what might be asked as a senator. So, this time, it’s, of course, been very much on the thinking side. But look, banks have a significant place in our economy, in our country, and this is a unique bit of accountability for the banking sector compared really, with any other part of the business community in Australia. But the four front up and they do so to address whatever is on the minds of the parliamentarians asking the question. 

Host: Do you have to try to sort of strategically war room it to use that management term?  You know, work out in advance what’s the likely incoming and what do you think it would be. I mean, there’s always that tension between profits and redundancies. Every time there’s a round of redundancies or any adjustments for technological change, the first thing we do here is Will rattles off, you know, how much money bank X made last year. You expecting a bit along those lines? 

Simon Birmingham: Look, I’ve no doubt that some of the announcements made by individual companies will form part of the questioning of those companies, and what tech changes are going to mean in terms of future outlook will be part of the questioning. And, you would be foolish for anybody to go before a parliamentary committee and not try to think about in advance and learn in advance what the areas of interest might be of the parliamentarians to make sure you’re as well prepared as you can be to answer those questions. But when you look at the investment in technology, KPMG said Australian banks had spent $9 billion on technology, a 15 per cent increase and that’s driven large part by consumer behaviour – that the way people are spending and engaging with banks has changed dramatically. Back in 2018 we used about $1 billion in sort of tap and go type payments now we spend around $20 billion every month, so from $1 billion a year to $20 billion a month. And so that requires a huge investment in the tech platforms to make that operate smoothly and safely. And that’s the critical things indeed, to be able to explore and discuss. 

Host: Birmo, it strikes me that technology might be an interesting clash point in these conversations, because, rightly or wrongly, when ANZ announced they’re going to lose 3500 jobs, a few people raised their eyebrows and thought, is this the big if? Despite the fact the bank was at pains to say, this is not an AI driven decision, but at the same time, and so there will be questions around artificial intelligence or what it means for banking, I imagine. But I’m guessing the banks still will want to make the point. ‘Hey, some of this stuff and some of this technology is going to be good for fighting scammers, and it’s going to be good for pushing back on scams and protecting people’s accounts’. So how do you see that flash point playing out? 

Simon Birmingham: Look, I think there’s a couple of points when it comes to jobs, no doubt they’ll also be exploration over the trend in job numbers, the increase that had occurred over recent years, and now some of that increase being withdrawn, the tightening of net interest margins and what that means, the competition in the banking sector, the fact that that people are getting when it comes to mortgages more and more through mortgage brokers, even small business loans more and more through brokers, and that they are driving for some of the best deals, but yes, the best in technology, in scams and fighting them. And you’ve got this situation at present, where, as I said, Australian banks spent around $9 billion last year on technology, while the Reuters news agency revealed the other day that Meta, the Facebook owner and technology company, happily earned around $16 billion from known scam ads. That’s a pretty remarkable thing, and it shows the investment banks need to make to help keep Australians safe against those types of horrific global trends.  

Host: That Reuters article, I thought was amazing Birmo because it almost made it sound like it’s part of Meta’s business model, like rather than trying to make the high jump bar prohibitively high for these scam companies, it almost looks like they’ve factored it into their forward financial planning at Facebook. 

Simon Birmingham: The revelations in terms of the documents that the Reuters news agency was able to get a hold of are kind of akin to the tobacco industry revelation two decades ago, because yes, Meta do appear to know that they are showing people around the world around 15 billion scam ads a day, a day, and where they suspect something to be a scam ad, they’re not taking it down. They’re charging the person more, which means Meta is making more money from the scam ads. So, there’s a huge task here for the social media sector to step up and to play its part. The increasing concern, of course, in the US and other places as well. It’s not just Australian consumer advocates and banks who are concerned. That’s replicated around the world, but it’s certainly an issue on which the consumer groups and the banks are at one in terms of our concern and work with government on bipartisan legislation for a Scams Prevention Framework that will see banks accept certain obligations, telecommunications companies accept certain obligations, but also, critically, the media platforms, the social media platforms, also have to accept a code and certain obligations and face penalties if they breach that. And we’re really looking forward to seeing that consultation come out and for those codes to be, hopefully operational from 1 July next year. 

Host: I don’t imagine this will come up necessarily in Canberra Birmo, but it has been a talking point globally. Donald Trump floating the idea of the 50-year mortgage in the last five or six days. Is that something you think we’ll see a push to adopt here in Australia? 

Simon Birmingham: I’d be surprised. The sort of the 30-year term is pretty well embedded in in the way Australians look and plan around their mortgages. But as I said, the mortgage market has become ever more competitive the net interest margins, so essentially, the cost of having money and watching it for banks has seen some tightening over recent years, and that’s a function of the competition, not just between the big four, but also from more banks, including those offering digital only loan type options. And so, with that competition comes innovation, and maybe some will see scope for, for different terms, particularly for perhaps younger borrowers. 

Host: Good stuff Birma. Simon Birmingham, the CEO of the Australian Banking Association, thanks for joining us. 

Ends