Commonwealth Bank Brand Guidelines: A 1911 Federal Bank, a Diamond & the 2020 Refresh

Savings and general banking under one federal roof.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia was created by law rather than by a group of merchants. The Commonwealth Bank Act 1911 took effect on 22 December 1911, and the bank opened its first branch in Melbourne on 15 July 1912, according to Wikipedia. The bank’s own history says it was empowered from the start to carry on both savings and general banking business, a combination Wikipedia calls rare for the time. Its founder, in effect, was the Australian federal government, which owned it outright for close to eight decades.

The early bank also traded through post office agencies, an arrangement with the postal service that Wikipedia says continues today. It took over the State Savings Bank of Tasmania in 1912, had branches in all six states by 1913 and moved its head office to Sydney in 1916.

For much of the twentieth century it was also Australia’s central bank. From 1920 it took over the issue of bank notes from the Treasury, and during the Second World War emergency legislation gave it almost all central bank powers, Wikipedia says. In 1942 it suspended its operations in Papua New Guinea after Japanese forces captured many of the towns where it had branches; it resumed there later in the war. The central and commercial roles were finally split at the end of the 1950s, when the Reserve Bank of Australia was created and the Commonwealth Banking Corporation was left as a purely commercial bank.

From the 1960s the bank diversified. Its history lists home insurance and travel from 1974, the launch of the Bankcard credit card the same year, Autobank teller machines from 1981 and EFTPOS from 1984. In February 1989 it bought 75 per cent of New Zealand’s ASB Bank, taking full ownership in 2000, and on 1 January 1991 it became the legal successor to the State Bank of Victoria.

Privatisation, NetBank and the app.

The big change in ownership came between 1991 and 1996, when the federal government sold the bank in three share offers. Wikipedia says it listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on 12 September 1991, and notes that it is one of the few Australian public companies whose official name does not end in “Limited.”

Privatisation was followed by growth. The bank’s timeline records a stockbroking company, later known as CommSec, and its first website in 1995, and the launch of NetBank internet banking in 1997, which the bank describes as a first among the major Australian banks. It completed a merger with the insurer and fund manager Colonial on 13 June 2000, Wikipedia says, and bought Bankwest from the British group HBOS in 2008. In 2013 it launched a new and enhanced CommBank app; Wikipedia notes that the bank is also known simply as CommBank.

The bank has also faced serious regulatory findings, set out here with dates and outcomes. In August 2017 AUSTRAC, the financial intelligence agency, began civil proceedings alleging breaches of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing law linked to the bank’s intelligent deposit machines; in June 2018 the bank agreed to settle, Wikipedia’s article on AUSTRAC says, citing The Age. The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, established on 14 December 2017, examined the bank among others; its final report, with 76 recommendations, was made public on 4 February 2019. The bank’s school banking programme, Dollarmites, ended in 2021 after a 2020 report by the corporate regulator ASIC recommended against such programmes.

Sport has long carried the name. Wikipedia says the bank began sponsoring Cricket Australia in 1987, in a partnership due to end in June 2025, and in April 2021 took naming rights for the women’s national football teams as the Commonwealth Bank Matildas; in June 2025 that deal was extended for six years to cover the men’s teams, including the Socceroos, from 1 September 2025.

How Australian and New Zealand banks present themselves.

Australian and New Zealand banks tend to present themselves through one strong symbol and one strong colour. The Commonwealth Bank has a diamond, which it refreshed in October 2020 to make it, in its marketing chief’s words to Campaign Brief, “lighter, brighter and more dynamic”; Westpac has kept the W of the old Bank of New South Wales since taking its new name in 1982. Across the banks in this guide, symbols and wordmarks tend to appear in bold colours, yellow, red, blue and green among them.

Their websites and campaigns lean on plain-English copy and on people rather than products. The Commonwealth Bank’s 2020 “Can Lives Here” campaign featured real customers rather than actors, Campaign Brief reported, and Westpac’s 2026 “Double You” campaign was framed around practical help with everyday financial admin. Photography of customers, cities and landscapes fills the space between the pages on home loans, everyday accounts, business banking and the mobile apps.

Sport and community programmes are part of the identity too. The Commonwealth Bank’s name has been attached to Australian cricket since 1987 and to the national women’s football teams since 2021, according to Wikipedia, while Westpac has sponsored a rescue helicopter service since 1973. Banks also publish annual and sustainability reports each year, which set out their brands, strategies and regulatory matters in their own words.

The banks share a recent history as well. The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, established in December 2017, examined the major lenders, and its final report was made public in February 2019. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — who founded it, who owns it and how its identity has changed — with the companies’ own claims marked as theirs.

Lighter, brighter and more dynamic.

The Commonwealth Bank’s symbol is a diamond. When the bank refreshed its identity in October 2020, the trade magazine Campaign Brief reported that it was the first change to the corporate identity in almost thirty years. The bank’s own timeline for 2020 records the launch of a refreshed logo it calls “the beacon.”

Campaign Brief reported that the refresh was led by M&C Saatchi Sydney, with the visual identity by its design business, Re. The design team called the diamond the asset customers recall most, and wanted the new version to stay rooted in that heritage while acting as a beacon of what it called measured optimism. The bank’s chief marketing officer said the aim was to make the diamond “lighter, brighter and more dynamic.” The work arrived alongside a new advertising platform, “Can Lives Here,” built around the bank’s long-running “Can” idea and featuring real customers rather than actors; it rolled out on television, in print, outdoors and on social media from Sunday 11 October 2020.

The bank’s timeline adds a separate Indigenous brand design, launched during NAIDOC Week in 2021, and its Bankwest subsidiary also received a refreshed logo in 2020. Today the group spans the Commonwealth Bank and CommBank names in Australia, Bankwest, CommSec and ASB in New Zealand.

For a design guide, Commonwealth Bank shows how a single symbol can carry a large brand through a change of ownership and a later refresh, with the shape kept and the tone made lighter. Compare Westpac, the older Sydney bank built around a red W, and ASB Bank, the New Zealand bank the group has owned outright since 2000. For this guide we use a warm yellow, near-black, cream and a deep amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Commonwealth Bank’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.