Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) customers would likely find it harder to accept the bank's explanation that following Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) overnight cash rate decisions could threaten its profitability.

They would likely cite CBA's full-year profit of $7.1 billion as reasons for bucking interest rate cuts or decisions not to pass in full RBA rate reduction which the bank disclosed on Wednesday.

At such a profit level, CBA earns $19.5 million a day or $313 for every Australian, highlighting the profitability of the bank's operations, Brisbane Times reckons.

The report confirms that Aussie banks are the most profitable in the world, and that CBA is the most profitable among the big four. Experts partly attribute the profitability of Australian banks to the damage that the 2008 global financial crisis did to European and North American banks.

The crisis slightly dented CBA's profit in 2009 when it dipped to $4.72 billion from $4.79 billion the previous year, but besides 2009, the bank's profits has been growing at healthy rates.

The bank attributes the 11 per cent growth in its annual net profit to cost cutting and decline in bad debt provisions. With the healthy bottomline, the banks said it would pay a dividend of $1.97 per share for the second half.

With the strong annual report, CBA shares grew in early trade by adding up to 1.9 per cent or $1.05 to its share price of $58.59 while the overall market gained just 0.4 per cent.

Although the big four is battling weak demand growth for its financial products as customers opt to repay debt instead of taking new loans, analysts forecast that the big four would still report total full-year profits of $25 billion due to cost cutting measures and lesser bad debt charges.

In the case of CBA, its workforce shrank by 3 per cent to 44,600 while bad debts also fell 15 per cent to $1.09 billion.

CBA Chief Executive Ian Narev insisted that the bank's profits are entirely appropriate for the size of its business.

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