Ian Narev defends CBA record profit Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ian Narev has defended the bank's run of record-breaking profits as good for the economy, after the lender's earnings exceeded $21 million a day last financial year. In the biggest ever profit for an Australian bank, the lender said cash earnings jumped 10 per cent to $7.8 billion in the year to June. Time isn't right to reward shareholders, CBA chief Ian Narev says. Photo: Andrew Quilty It comes as consumers and businesses remain reluctant to borrow, and was assisted by the bank's refusal to pass on cuts in official interest rates to home loan customers. But Mr Narev argued it was in the community's interests for the nation's biggest bank to be racking up ever-growing profits. ""Once you've had one record profit, the next record profit just means you've grown. And I think it's to everyone's benefit in this economy for all the major banks to be growing,"" Mr Narev said. ""So I hope to continue to deliver record profits, because it will just mean will just mean we continue to grow. I think that's a good thing for our customers and our shareholders and our people and I think the community more broadly."" Mr Narev argued that its strong profitability benefited its 800,000 small shareholders, who have benefited from a sharp rise in bank share prices and dividend payments in the last year. It also employs 52,000 people and pays $3 billion a year in tax, he said. With bank fees paid by households falling in recent years, the driving force behind the Commonwealth Bank's profits has been the $1.2 trillion home loan market. One in four mortgages are with the Commonwealth Bank, and it is also the largest holder of deposits. Its consumer-facing retail banking arm drove the latest bumper result, with profits from this division surging by 13 per cent over the year to $3.05 billion. After many overseas banks were severely wounded by the global financial crisis, the Commonwealth Bank is now the tenth biggest bank in the world. Australia's major lenders have also been ranked the most profitable in the developed world for several years running. While consumer groups and some smaller lenders argue the industry's high profits are excessive, Mr Narev argued that competition in the market for bank deposits was ""intense."" Banks are also trying to woo borrowers, with the National Australia Bank earlier this week promising to pay $1000 to customers who transferred their home loans to the bank. Deep cuts in interest rates have recently raised concerns among some analysts of an over-heating in Australia's property market, but Mr Narev said he thought he was not concerned about a bubble forming. ""There's no doubt that in sustained low interest rate environments you can get asset bubble and there are risks that can carry over to the property market. We're not seeing signs of that at the moment,"" he said.