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Australia's largest retail bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, has sent corporate doctors into two troubled companies as the lender faces a blow-out in bad debt.

CBA sent shivers through the financial community last week when it reported its interim profits had been hit by a higher-than-expected amount of provisioning for bad and doubtful debt.

Chief executive Ralph Norris confirmed the bank had sent restructuring specialists into at least two companies struggling to survive.

"Basically there are two companies that that has happened to," Mr Norris told ABC TV.

Mr Norris declined to confirm whether one of the two was the stricken Allco Finance Group Ltd.

"I don't really want to discuss individual customers or clients but I think that the market is pretty well aware of those particular corporates," Mr Norris said.

In the first half results CBA was forced to bump up its loan impairment provisioning levels by $138 million.

CBA lent money to a number of businesses troubled by the credit crunch and confirmed it had a $160 million unsecured exposure to struggling shopping centre owner Centro Properties Group.

Last week, Allco postponed its own interim profit announcement until this week as it struggled to refinance its obligations.

On Friday night, Centro, which is Australia's second largest shopping centre owner, announced it has won an extension to refinance its $3.9 billion of maturing debt facilities.

Mr Norris said his bank had not yet lost any money despite putting aside money to cover potential losses.

"We have provided for those particular corporates who are not in as strong position as they were," the CBA chief said.

"But I have to say that none of them have defaulted at this point and they are servicing their debt as per their arrangements."

The higher funding costs, caused by the global credit crunch, that have troubled some of CBA's corporate clients, also wiped $100 million before tax off the bank's own first half bottom line.

CBA's net profit rose by eight per cent to $2.371 billion for the six months to December 31.

But cash net profit, the bank's preferred measure of profitability, rose by four per cent to $2.385 billion, against market expectations of a figure around $2.48 billion.

CBA earned the wrath of Treasurer Wayne Swan when it twice raised interest rates beyond the Reserve Bank's hikes to the official cash rate in order to cover the higher cost of borrowing.

Mr Norris defended his bank's handling of home loan rates so far and reconfirmed the bank's full year profit expectation of matching or exceeding industry growth.

On the macroeconomic front, the CBA boss said the central bank's move to stave off inflation through interest rate hikes had come in an environment of high employment.

"The labour markets are so tight that I think that that will be to some extent absorbed," he said.

"But ... the fact of the matter is that people will have to make decisions, purchasing decisions, which will see them obviously reduce demand."