This year's interim profit announcement from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has been 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 into banking and superannuation and several other battles with regulators.CBA's chief executive officer Ian Narev, has been trying to say sorry:"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."Nevertheless, banking group's net profit, inclusive of discontinued operations and allowing for the likely penalty provision to be imposed by Austrac was A$4.87 billion, down 0.7 per cent on the previous half-year result on a rising market.And well Narev might say sorry - another $200 million in provisions for other court battles and the Royal Commission has seen almost $600 million in profits or dividend payout held back. Narev said this was intended as a one-off expense, but quipped that the bank seemed to be having to include a one-off provision every reporting season. He was not prepared to dig deeper into the other legal expenses to indicate how much has been set aside for the Royal Commission, which starts next week.The results highlights included:Cost-to-income: The cost-to-income ratio of the rose 90 basis points to 44.2 per cent.Impairment charges: The loan impairment expense dropped 0.5 per cent over the previous corresponding period to $596 million.Margin: The net interest margin rose six bps to 2.16 per cent against the 1H17 result. Return on equity: On a cash basis, ROE fell to 14.5 per cent down 120 bps on the previous year. Cash earnings per share of 2.72 puts this result down by 3.2 per cent over the previous comparable period (ie, 1H17).Dividends: The bank will pay an interim dividend of $2.00 a share - a one cent increase over the previous year's interim dividend of $1.99 a share.Capital: The common equity tier one ratio rose 50 bps to 10.4 per cent (on APRA's preferred measure) and to 16.3 from 15.4 per cent on the bank's international comparison measure (that is, an increase of 90 bps).Funding: Customer deposits increased over the year to December, boosting the proportion of funding sourced from customer deposits from 66 per cent to 68 per cent.