Marianne Perkovic will depart CBA following a decision to combine the private banking business with its retail banking services division. Investor Daily understands other members of the Commonwealth Private leadership will remain in their roles to ensure continuity for clients.
“We can confirm that Marianne Perkovic will be leaving her position as [executive general manager] of Commonwealth Private, and will finish up with CBA in October,” a spokesperson told ifa sister title Investor Daily. “Marianne has been with CBA for more than 10 years, and been at the helm of Commonwealth Private since 2016.
“She has been instrumental in driving multiple improvements within the business to make it simpler and better for our private clients, and will leave it in a strong position when she leaves CBA later this year.”
Investor Daily understands that the move is intended to create better support for the bank’s private clients, whose needs are predominantly focused on home buying and deposits as well as financial advice.
Ms Perkovic joined CBA as a general manager of distribution at Colonial First State in January 2010, and was executive general manager of financial advice before joining Commonwealth Private in 2016. Prior to CBA, she was at Count Financial Limited for 11 years, where she became the youngest appointed CEO of an ASX-listed company.
Ms Perkovic also fronted the royal commission, where she revealed that Count Financial had charged advice fees to deceased customers.
The news comes following the corporate regulator’s announcement it would take CBA to court for fees paid by Colonial First State for sales of its super products through the bank’s retail branches, which ASIC alleges was a breach of conflicted remuneration laws.




If CBA were the Gold Medalists of ‘Fees for No Service’ then Perkovic was the Gold Medalist of ‘Incompetent Management’. Utterly clueless in the Royal Commission, this insipid sad excuse for a Manager destroyed staff morale, and totally decimated what was once a multi-award winning Private Bank. She is PerKOVID-19 for any business!
The Wicked Witch is dead!
Actually, on reflection, that is not becoming. The appropriate response to someone who has been a bit nasty to more than a few people is with decorum. Also its Munchkinland not Lilliput from the Wizard of Oz scene. Withdrawn.
Received ~$2m for the Count deal, then was appointed to the Head of Retail FP at CBA, completely destroyed the Retail FP business by combining the Business Wealth Business (which was profitable and compliant) with Retail business (which was heading for the cliff) along the way she appointed only those that were ‘yes’ people to her and there were a few, after destroying the combined businesses, she was promoted to Private Wealth and took with her these same ‘yes’ people and had them in roles that were beyond them .
Finally CBA realise this was not for her?? Count has been sold back as it was losing money and the new owners were making a profit inside 3 months?? Really poor and again, corporates putting clueless people that do not understand FP or can relate to people in these senior roles then blaming the FP for their compliance issues.
Westpac/BT no different – a bunch of incompetent bankers put in charge – removed those that understood the business, then wonder why they have issues, so they sell the business?
Don’t hold back!
Private Bank financial planning is really lipstick on a pig anyway, highly paid, loss making advisers
Insiders like myself could never figure out for the last 10 years how she EVER held her positions in the first place!!??
She was a terrible presenter and speaker, never understood financial planning, oversaw CBA FP during the big scandal and ended up with a promotion, helped broker the deal for CBA to buy Count (and got a large payment for her shares, oh but somehow wasn’t a conflict of interest?), the biggest firms in Count disliked her so much so all defected back to BT, she promoted a guy named Harry who was super dodgy to run FP and sacked the ultimate professional named Jack who should have run the whole show! She was totally incompetant and promoted the incompetent lapdogs who supported her. Pray to God she doesn’t show up in any of your dealer groups in a management position!
Yes, I think there is quite a few in the industry who have been surprised how teflon coated she is. She will pop up somewhere, most likely a couple of Board appointments.
Perhaps she helped the Board meet their diversity quota KPI.
Sadly she isn’t exactly Robinson Crusoe amongst these firms. I think the process is something like this 1) Get headhunted from other organisation as an expert in leading change management, 2) implement “change” to new organisation that causes maximum chaos & disharmony, 3) get headhunted by next organisation as an expert in leading change management, 4) leave previous trainwreck behind, 5) repeat from step 2.
Couldnt agree more. NAB FP basically imported a team from AMP 3-4 years ago, which resulted in their effective demise by late 2019.
Not to mention signed a deal with the FPA to remain quite during the CBA advice scandal in return for compulsory membership.
yes, as understand it, she even set certain peoples lunchtimes to control who could make friends with who. I wonder how she found the time