CEO Ian Narev says the competitive threat posed to the Commonwealth Bank by the likes of Apple and Google is as great as that of its big three rivals, according to ZDNet” (http://tinyurl.com/q7qocyw).

“We consider we have got very, very good competitors in the major banks, we have got very good competitors in the next tier banks,” Narev told the G100 Congress in Sydney on Tuesday. “We worry every day about all those competitors, but we worry equally about the niche players, many of them well resourced, many of them international. The Apples, the Googles, the Samsungs, the PayPals, the credit card companies, who can pick particular slivers as a result of the application of technology into financial services and compete. We need to be prepared for that.”

According to “ZDNet,” he says he welcomed competition. However, he added that it was unclear how regulation of the financial services sector was going to adapt to the participation of so-called niche players.