‘Greedy’ banks take a beating

Banks and the people who run them carry the blame for the industry’s widespread greeddriven misconduct, a royal commission says.

Banking royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne QC says the time has come to address financial misconduct and prevent its recurrence, proposing a raft of measures designed to better protect consumers.

Hayne has made 24 referrals, including all the major banks except for Westpac, to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Australian Prudential Regulation Authority for further investigation.

A number of matters heard by the commission are already before the regulators.

He has left it up to the regulators he criticised for letting much of the misconduct go unpunished to decide on any action, meaning anyone expecting criminal charges will have to wait.

Hayne’s final report was handed down last night, and included 76 recommendations and scathing criticisms of industry players.

While some have tried to blame misconduct on a few bad apples, Hayne’s final report makes it clear that the buck stops with the banks and other financial services companies, their boards and senior executives.

‘‘There can be no doubt that the primary responsibility for misconduct in the financial services industry lies with the entities concerned and those who managed and controlled those entities: their boards and senior management.’’

Hayne was scathing of some bank bosses, particularly the National Australia Bank, for being unwilling to accept responsibility. ‘‘It seemed to me that there remain elements of unwillingness to recognise, and to accept responsibility for, poor conduct of the kinds examined in this inquiry,’’ he said.

Hayne said he was not confident NAB had learned the lessons from the past as he criticised its CEO Andrew Thorburn and chair Dr Ken Henry, a former Treasury secretary.

He said Thorburn treated the charging of fees for no service as nothing more than carelessness combined with system

deficiencies.

‘‘The amounts of money that just ‘fell into the pocket’ of so many large and sophisticated financial entities, the number of times it happened, and the many years over which it happened, show that it cannot be swept aside as no more than bumbling incompetence or the product of poor computer systems,’’ Hayne said.

Overall compensation over the fees-for-no-service scandal across the financial services industry, which has included charging dead customers’ estates, is expected to top A$1 billion. – AAP