Jo Boundy on CommBank’s big marketing year and the battle for relevance

To say it has been a busy year for Jo Boundy and the marketing team at Commonwealth Bank would be something of an understatement.

The country’s biggest bank has spent 2026 putting considerable weight behind its brand: becoming the inaugural domestic founding partner of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, appointing Howatson+Company as its new creative agency, expanding its sporting and cultural partnerships and continuing to build out its Doubt Never Did brand platform.

Now comes another sizeable piece of the puzzle: the biggest overhaul yet of CommBank Yello.

From October, more than nine million eligible customers will be able to earn points not simply through credit card spending, but across home loans, savings, insurance, debit and credit cards and other parts of their relationship with the bank.

For Boundy, the seemingly disparate moves are connected by a bigger ambition: keeping a 120-year-old bank modern and relevant as both banking and marketing rapidly change.

“We've got a big new brand campaign in market in Doubt Never Did. We announced our new uniform designer Beare Park at designing our new uniform. We're pretty excited about our Olympics partnership,” Boundy told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

“And then today's big news, which is reimagining our CommBank Yello program. I think when you look at all of those elements, it's about how we can continue to be a very modern, progressive, contemporary company, and make sure that we're connecting with our customers, and also most importantly, representing the very best of Australia.”

From a banking app to an everyday platform

Perhaps the clearest explanation for why loyalty suddenly matters so much comes from the sheer frequency with which Australians now interact with their bank. CommBank group executive, retail banking services Angus Sullivan said the bank has about 9.5 million customers using its app, generating around 14 million logins each day.

Some customers, he said, open it as many as 20 times a day.

“I was here when we built the CommBank app, which would be 10 years ago, and now we've got nine and a half million customers on the CommBank app logging in 14 million times a day,” Sullivan told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

“I don't think we could have imagined. In part, I think at the time we would have thought, what would people be doing if they're logging on? And we've got some people who log on 20 times a day.”

That frequency has fundamentally changed the relationship between banks and customers. What was once largely transactional has become a daily, and sometimes near-constant, digital interaction.

It also creates an obvious marketing opportunity. The reworked Yello program is CBA's attempt to reward more of that relationship rather than continuing to rely on the traditional credit card loyalty model.

“There’s a lot of customers who don't have a credit card, and they're really important to us. And so we wanted to make sure we expand the program so there's more ways to earn,” Sullivan said.

The bank is also linking rewards more closely to the depth of a customer's relationship with CBA.

“If you're a customer with a mortgage with us, you're going to earn more points on your credit card when you spend than if you're a customer who just has a transaction account with us,” Sullivan said.

“We're trying to put in place a program that really rewards customers for more they do with us across the whole banking relationship, not just spend more on a credit card.”

The shift also comes as the economics underpinning traditional card rewards are changing. The Reserve Bank's new payments rules, including lower domestic interchange caps, take effect from 1 October, the same day the reimagined Yello program launches.

Customers will be able to earn or redeem rewards with brands including Woolworths Everyday Rewards, Origin Energy, Myer, Velocity Frequent Flyer, DoorDash, bp and Qatar Airways.

For Sullivan, loyalty is increasingly about retention as much as rewards.

“We know that customers who engage with the program they engage more with us as a bank,” he said.

“From our perspective, there's great value. Customer gets more value, and we get the opportunity to talk to the customer.” 

Boundy sees the same challenge playing out at brand level.

Banking remains an essential service, but the category around it has changed dramatically as digital banking, fragmented media and new competitors reshape how financial brands interact with customers.

“Banking is such a critical and essential utility for all Australians, but we also know that as a brand, we have an incredible responsibility,” Boundy said.

“So we see our role as not only providing that utility and support for Australians, but also making sure that we can represent the best of Australia and help Australia.”

That has pushed CBA into a broader mix of platforms and partnerships.

Its six-year Brisbane 2032 agreement made CommBank the first domestic founding partner and official bank of the Games, alongside its wider backing of the Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams.

The bank has also expanded its football footprint, including the CommBank Matildas and Socceroos, while adding cultural properties such as Tropfest to its sponsorship mix.

“We constantly challenge ourselves,” Boundy said.

“We try and think about what's the best way to connect with customers, what's the best way to represent Australians, and so that may extend to some of the sponsorship properties that we might take up.

“But that may be from sponsorships, it may be from how we directly communicate with customers, it may be from big campaigns, it may be from partnerships that we do. We're constantly looking at how we can evolve to meet what our core business objectives are.”

That evolution increasingly includes creators.

Boundy said the fragmentation of media consumption has made influencers and creators another important route into audiences, pointing to CBA's work with endurance athlete and creator Nedd Brockmann and the CommBank Tour travelling through regional Australia.

“I think we've seen an incredible fragmentation of how people consume media, but also how people want to participate in media,” she said.

“Personally, I love seeing how much traction creators and influencers are getting. We do a lot from our content ecosystem, connecting with different people who can help share their stories.”

A new agency era

There is also change behind the scenes. CommBank appointed Howatson+Company as its external creative agency in June, ending a 14-year relationship with M+C Saatchi. Boundy said the transition to the new agency is now underway.

“We're really proud of our 14 year partnership that we had with M+C. We've now welcomed Howatson and Co. on board,” she said.

“We're in a transition stage with them, getting them on board. But we're really excited about the future partnership we're going to have with them.”

Taken together, it is a substantial amount of change for Australia's biggest banking brand.

But the common denominator is relatively simple: as customers interact with their bank more frequently, across more digital touchpoints and more stages of their lives, CBA wants its marketing to keep pace.

As Sullivan puts it, the bank now has an opportunity that would have been difficult to imagine when its app was first built.

“Sometimes I think I wonder with AI when we're going to have the same thing in 10 years' time,” he said.

“There are going to be these ways that customers engage that we just couldn't even imagine today.”