Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn says he wants to see the bank have a substantially higher market share in regional communities, as it pauses closures until 2026.

But he noted most customers did not change financial institutions following a closure.

At a senate hearing on regional branches today, Comyn said about 40 per cent of the bank’s 728 bank branches were in regional areas but that CBA had to maintain a level of profitability.

“We have to make sure we’re not allowing or seeing too many or too large cross subsidies generated over time,” he said.

“We want to maintain competitiveness in all of those markets and do a great job for our customers, but also make a sustainable return.”

Comyn said the bank did not keep individual profit and loss statements for each branch, but said it saw value in providing face-to-face services in regional Australia.

“There’s no question that regional Australia is valuable to us,” he said.

“And frankly, we support a broader customer base than others are prepared to.

One issue, Comyn said, was that customers tended to stay with banks even when branches were closed.

While there was sometimes a temporary reduction in customer satisfaction, it tended to recover after 12 months, he said, with about 95 per cent of customers not choosing to change financial institutions following a branch closure.

“I hope that isn’t true because then our decision to persist with a much larger footprint in regional Australia over the next three years, commercially won’t be a good one,” he said.

Comyn said the bank was working to preserve regional jobs and face-to-face services and that he wanted to see CBA have a stronger customer base in areas where they had the only physical presence.

“I would like to see the Commonwealth Bank having a substantially higher market share in regional communities where we are the only bank in town.”