CommSec extends its reach

Commonwealth Bank executive general manager for private client services, Edward Tait, describes the bank's online brokerage CommSec as a financial services supermarket.

At an analysts' briefing yesterday Tait outlined plans to stock the supermarket shelves with a lot more goodies.

Commonwealth is planning a suite of new products and a more sophisticated investment platform. New offerings would include a geared product set.

CommSec has 1.5 million customers and claims a 48 per cent share of the online non-advisory share broking market, up from 46 per cent last year.

The bank has spent the past year going over plans to transform CommSec into a full service institution in its own right.

For some time the bank has recognised that the CommSec customer base is sufficiently different from the bank's to warrant the creation of a wider product portfolio that may include lending and deposit products.

Tait was not giving much away yesterday except to say that the rollout will start this year.