Commonwealth Bank of Australia Stock (ASX:CBA): Share Price Jumps on Refund Backflip as RBA Minutes Shift 2026 Rate Outlook

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX:CBA) shares rallied on Tuesday, 23 December 2025, as investors weighed two storylines moving Australia’s largest bank stock right now: CommBank’s fresh commitment to “goodwill” payments tied to ASIC’s bank-fee review, and new Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) minutes that openly discuss the circumstances for a rate hike in 2026.

By late morning in Australia, CBA stock was trading around A$161, up roughly 2% on the session, even as the headline controversy around low‑income customer fees returned to the spotlight. ^[1]

CBA share price today: what the market is telling you on 23 December 2025

CBA shares were quoted at A$161.43, up A$3.17 (about +2%) on the day, according to data published during Tuesday’s session. ^[2]

The broader market backdrop was supportive: the S&P/ASX 200 pushed higher in a pre‑Christmas rally (with the ABC live markets blog citing the index up around 1.13% during the afternoon). ^[3]

That matters because bank shares—especially heavyweight financials like CBA—often move with overall risk appetite during “thin” holiday liquidity. Reuters also noted that trading conditions heading into year-end are subdued, with limited catalysts beyond macro releases like the RBA minutes. ^[4]

The day’s biggest CBA-specific headline: a fresh A$68m in “goodwill payments” after ASIC’s fee report

The corporate development most directly tied to Commonwealth Bank of Australia stock today is CBA’s announcement it will begin making additional goodwill payments of approximately A$68 million to relevant concession customers, starting in early February 2026. The bank says eligible customers don’t need to do anything—CBA will contact them. ^[5]

CBA says this lifts its total goodwill payments to approximately A$93 million, including around A$25 million already paid linked to ASIC’s earlier work on fees affecting Indigenous consumers (ASIC Report 785). ^[6]

What ASIC found—and why it keeps coming back

ASIC’s broader “Better and beyond” work (Report 811) has been about whether low‑income customers—particularly people relying on Centrelink payments—were kept in higher-fee accounts when cheaper options were available. ASIC’s July 2025 media release around the review said banks would refund more than A$93 million in total, and highlighted the scale of the issue across the industry. ^[7]

In the ABC’s coverage of today’s CBA update, the bank’s fee issue is framed as part of that wider finding: CBA and its subsidiary Bankwest were identified as having charged about A$270 million in fees across roughly 2.2 million low‑income customers over five years, with fees including items such as account‑keeping, dishonour and overdraw charges. ^[8]

Consumer group CHOICE welcomed the move but argued it still falls short of repaying the full amount flagged in ASIC’s work—calling it a significant backflip from CBA’s earlier stance. ^[9]

Why the market can shrug at “A$68m” while still caring about the story

From a purely financial perspective, A$68m is small relative to CBA’s earnings power. In its FY25 results materials, CBA reported cash NPAT of A$10.252 billion (and statutory NPAT of A$10.133 billion) for the year ended 30 June 2025. ^[10]

That doesn’t make the issue irrelevant—just different. Investors tend to break this kind of news into two buckets:

Direct P&L impact: modest in the context of a big bank’s annual profit.
Second-order risks: regulatory pressure, reputational damage, customer remediation costs over time, and how aggressively regulators and politicians push the sector next.

CBA’s own framing is that it is “fulfilling” a commitment to make additional goodwill adjustments and that, once completed, it expects its combined goodwill payments across the ASIC reports to be larger than the cumulative payments of any other bank responding to Reports 785 and 811. ^[11]

RBA minutes: the macro plot twist that matters for CBA stock in 2026

The other major driver in play today is interest-rate expectations.

Reuters reported that minutes from the RBA’s December policy meeting show the board discussed the circumstances in which an increase in the cash rate might need to be considered in the coming year. The cash rate was held at 3.60%, but the board flagged that inflation risks had increased after hotter readings. ^[12]

Key data points highlighted in the minutes coverage:

Headline inflation rose to 3.8% in October (with some of the lift attributed to the ending of certain electricity rebates).
More importantly for policy, core inflation rose to 3.3% in October, above the RBA’s 2–3% target band. ^[13]
Markets were pricing roughly a 25% chance of a February hike, and Reuters noted a quarter‑point increase was fully priced by July with additional tightening implied for 2026. ^[14]

Why rate-hike risk can be “good news” and “bad news” for banks at the same time

Banks like CBA don’t simply “win when rates rise.” They win (or lose) based on how rates move through the plumbing:

Net interest margin (NIM): Higher-for-longer rates can help margins if banks can reprice loans faster than deposits. But competition can erase that advantage quickly.
Funding costs: Wholesale and deposit funding can become more expensive.
Credit quality: Higher repayments can lift arrears and loan losses if households and small businesses crack.

This is why today’s rate shift reads as a mixed macro signal: it can support earnings if the banking system holds margins and credit losses don’t rise meaningfully.

The broader bank trade is back: “Santa rally,” thinner volumes, and a bid under financials

CBA’s move today is also happening inside a broader rebound in Australian financials.

IG’s afternoon report noted the ASX 200 financials sector climbed 1.42% and described it as the highest level since mid‑November, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia “leading the pack,” up 2.0% to A$161.45 during the session. ^[15]

A Reuters market wrap published via TradingView captured the mood earlier in the week: as miners and banks led a rally, Reuters noted financials were recovering after a valuation-driven pullback in November, and explicitly tied improving bank prospects to markets pricing higher-for-longer rates, “deposit repricing,” and stabilising NIMs—even as competition remains intense. ^[16]

That context matters for CBA because it’s often treated as the premium bank proxy: when investors rotate into “quality defensives,” CBA gets a bid; when they rotate into “value banks,” CBA’s valuation premium can become the problem.

CBA stock forecasts: analysts see downside despite today’s rally

Here’s the awkward, very-2025 reality for Commonwealth Bank of Australia stock: the share price is high enough that many analyst models are still below the market, even after the stock fell from its 2025 peak.

Consensus snapshots from multiple data aggregators today show a similar shape:

Average 12‑month target around A$121.62, with a high target of A$146.00 and a low target of A$99.81 (14 analysts in the MarketScreener set). ^[17]
Investing.com shows the same average target figure (A$121.62) and describes the consensus rating as “Strong Sell” (0 buys / 14 sells in its display). ^[18]
TradingView’s analyst forecast view also shows a target around A$124.37, with the same approximate target range (min ~A$99.81 to max ~A$146.00) and an overall strong sell skew. ^[19]

If you anchor to Monday’s close of A$158.26 (shown in the same consensus feeds), an average target near A$121–122 implies roughly low‑20s percent downside—a giant gap for a mega‑cap bank. ^[20]

Why the targets are so far below the tape

Analyst skepticism tends to cluster around three ideas:

Valuation premium: CBA is often priced like a “global-quality franchise,” not a plain bank.
Margin pressure risk: deposit competition can compress NIM even in stable or rising rate environments.
Late-cycle credit risk: if rates stay higher for longer, the downside tail is credit losses—not tomorrow, but eventually.

Reuters, in earlier coverage of CBA’s quarterly update, also leaned into the idea that the stock “remains expensive” compared with global banks, while describing margin pressure from competition and a lower cash rate environment at that time. ^[21]

Dividends: still a core part of the CBA investment case

Dividend appeal remains one of the reasons investors tolerate CBA’s premium.

CBA’s investor materials show:

FY25 final dividend: A$2.60 per share, fully franked (paid 29 September 2025). ^[22]
FY25 total dividend: A$4.85 per share, fully franked. ^[23]
FY25 dividend payout ratio cited at 79% of cash NPAT, near the upper end of CBA’s target payout range. ^[24]

At a share price around A$161, that FY25 dividend run-rate implies a yield of roughly 3% (before franking credits). That’s not a “deep yield” story—but it’s a steady one, especially for investors focused on fully franked income.

A quick reality check: the refund headline versus the size of CommBank

The fee remediation story is politically loud, but investors are trying to map it onto CBA’s scale.

CBA’s FY25 results snapshot shows:

Cash NPAT: A$10.252b
Net interest margin:2.08% (FY25)
Operating expenses: A$12.996b (FY25)
Investment spend: A$2.297b (up 14% on FY24) ^[25]

Against numbers like that, A$68m is a rounding error on earnings. The market’s real question is whether this is an isolated remediation item—or part of a broader regulatory/cost trend that slowly raises the “friction tax” on the franchise.

What to watch next for Commonwealth Bank of Australia shares

The next major catalysts for CBA stock are less about one-off payments and more about the macro path—and how it hits bank margins and credit.

1) Inflation data in late January, then the RBA meeting in early February

Reuters emphasised that the RBA board wanted to see fourth‑quarter inflation data due in late January before judging whether inflation pressures are persistent, raising the stakes for the next meeting. ^[26]

2) The “internal forecast war”: markets vs economists vs the RBA

CommBank’s own economists have been publicly arguing for a 0.25% rate rise in February and forecast the cash rate reaching 3.85% by end‑2026, with inflation expected to hover around 3.3% through 2026—still above the target band. ^[27]

That’s not “investment research” from CBA (they explicitly say it’s informational), but it’s a useful datapoint: even inside Australia’s biggest bank, the base case has tilted hawkish into 2026. ^[28]

3) The real bank tell: margins and deposit competition

CBA’s November quarterly update put competition front and centre, noting margin pressure from deposit switching and a lower cash-rate environment, while costs rose due to wages and technology. ^[29]

If the 2026 story becomes “higher for longer,” watch whether banks can hold deposit pricing discipline—or whether they end up paying away the benefit in a funding arms race.

4) Follow-through on the goodwill payments

CBA says payments will begin early February 2026, and the public narrative will likely track how frictionless (or messy) the process is, how many customers are contacted, and whether the issue escalates into further remediation or policy action. ^[30]

Bottom line for CBA stock on 23 December 2025

CBA shares are higher today, and the market’s behaviour is telling: investors appear to be treating the A$68m goodwill payment commitment as financially manageable, while paying closer attention to the bigger swing factor—the RBA’s inflation problem and the revived possibility of tighter policy in 2026. ^[31]

The tension inside Commonwealth Bank of Australia stock remains the same: a premium franchise priced like a premium franchise, in a world where analyst consensus still implies notable downside—unless the macro path and margins cooperate. ^[32]