Commonwealth Bank reported a profit of A$9.23 billion yesterday, a decline of 4.8 per cent on its record $9.65 billion last year. This was CBA's first profit reversal since the global financial crisis.This time, however, the problems were internally generated. As with AMP, which reported diminished half-year profits yesterday, the cost of reputation risk moved from a text-book concept given lip-service at best to something concrete hitting the bottom lines of both major financial players.Excluding one-off items, CBA's underlying performance was solid with cash NPAT up 3.7 per cent.    This is despite some serious drags on momentum - primarily from when, six months ago, CBA's result was overshadowed by the need to make provisions for what might be some of the largest corporate fines in Australian history, along with extraordinary costs for the royal commission and several other battles with regulators.This pushed the interim half year result backwards by 0.7 per cent, compared to HY2017, with CBA's then-chief executive officer Ian Narev, trying to say sorry - notably for the A$375 million expense provision, an estimate of the civil penalty a Court may impose in the Austrac proceedings."We have taken a significant provision for regulatory and compliance costs, consistent with accounting standards. We have also taken a A$375 million expense provision which we believe to be a reliable estimate of the civil penalty a Court may impose in the Austrac proceedings. We recognise, and regret, that these costs arise from our failure to meet some standards that we should have. We will continue to work hard to do better," Narev said at the time.His words were echoed by Matt Comyn, chief executive officer of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, in an in-house "interview" with Juliana Roadley, senior manager of media and content for CommSec, regarding the bank's FY18 results. "A number of one-off items … impacted the result, including a couple of large penalties that we have resolved," he said. "If you strip some of those out, actually the result looks more from an underlying perspective up 3.7 per cent. I think given the context of what we have had to operate in, it really does show the resilience of our core franchise. And it is a combination of both that, as well as our outlook on our capital position, which has enabled us to declare a full final year dividend of $4.31, up two cents."Included in those one-offs is the $700 million penalty to Austrac and settling the ASIC BBSW matter. CBA has already flagged the sale of its life insurance business in both Australia and New Zealand. "We announced the demerger of our Wealth and Mortgage Broking operations, and this morning we have also announced that we will be exiting South Africa," Comyn said. "That is really going to enable us to focus on our core banking businesses in Australia and New Zealand, and becoming a simpler, better bank."Retail banking services accounts for over half of the Group's profit, and was slightly below system growth in home loans while