Maybe they are also into cricket?
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Shockers from the banking royal commission:
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Here is a bit of an article on how the Banks are selling the information they garner about us all.
While not illegal and all personal data has been removed, in light of the very small interest rates they pay, the large fees they charge, and the huge profits they make this extra grab for money stinks. A captive supply of saleable data, one you cannot avoid supplying and with no real return to yourself from that selling. No wonder the Government and their Bank buddies are so keen to cut the cash economy.
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Iâm sorry, I missed where they asked for my approval to share my information.
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Are the people in my local branch the only âgood onesâ employed by CBA?
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Sadly, Iâm certain that the more the cage is rattled, the more bad seeds will come out. But Iâm glad that your local bank people are good.
The article just confirms my belief that when the focus and ethos of an enterprise moves from service to profit, it moves the customers from people to commodities, and opens the door to corruption within the organization.
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Once upon a time the path to being a corporate executive was through sales and marketing. They dealt with customers.
Today it is accounting, legal, and an MBA. The first is P/L, the second is risk management, and the last is as often as not âtechnical management and visionary arm wavingâ. One need just look at a CEO to understand the Boardâs corporate priorities, however while profit will always be first some understand keeping the customers first begets profit, but profit for the sake of profit all but chases customers away.
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Read between these lines 
I simultaneously have overwhelming feelings of humour and gratefulness that I left NAB - shades of the âsugarmountainâ who Iâm sure couldnât have fitted more b/s bingo words into a spin delivery if heâd said it himself (with his 25 spinwriters) âŠ
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In other words âexcessively complicated administrative proceduresâ as in âbureaucracyâ
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WowâŠâWe believe that the battlefronts of data are hindsight, insight and foresight.â WTF!?
That article has sooo much spin Iâm left feeling extremely motion sick and giddy.
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Not what I intended, but to a degree yes.
Possibly the worst example was Roger Smith who inherited a complete mess, but then with decent intentions did much to destroy GM as an iconic company.
He gets much the âcreditâ for transforming âhisâ individual automotive brands into look-alike undifferentiated boxes only defined by trim and price, thus alienating customers. He also exhibited a lack of understanding of âhisâ manufacturing business although he was a GM lifer since he saw the world through his accounting eyes not âhisâ customers eyes.
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He helped EDS become what it did also ⊠we have so much to remember him by ⊠
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We are drifting well off-topic and I recognise it. My choice is a mea culpa or a delete, so a mea culpa.
An old mate, the late Myron Ginsberg, had an office at GM Research when I first met him. After EDS was bought and established as a subsidiary Myron was marginalised and moved to an EDS office, offsite from GM.
He was not only charged rent, he was charged to use the conference room and had to hire the overhead projector if he wanted to use it, in addition to costs for phone and internet. The epitome of the âMBA genusâ where everything has a cost but not a value unless it produces dollars to âthe landlordâ.
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Do I understand it correctly that they are going to move to large scale data mining (to make money) using Amazonâs cloud servers (to save money)?
Another example of over complicating things so the speaker appears to have some arcane knowledge, and exclude those not in their select group.
This is a reflection of how banks interact with customers too. Plain clearly understood language is shunned in favour of obscuring the truth.
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Well you know mostly who you canât trust after ASIC revelations about Financial Advisers in the Banking RC. 9 out of 10 Financial Advisers fall short of ASICâs standards according to evidence given by ASICâs Deputy Chair Peter Kell. $600 million in refunds for bad advice in the last 10 yearsâŠCBA and others have had to make big paybacks to investors.
An article about this unsalutary state of affairs follows
Better odds flipping a coin than a 1 in 10 chance of a good financial adviser.
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The environment that enables, allows, and abets this malfeasance is (Drum Roll) government! Voters either do not care enough or weigh honesty and integrity in financial affairs to be down the list to their welded on predilections.
edit: Just stumbled into this one. What can be written!
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/39903361/amp-cba-grilled-over-fees-for-no-service/
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I got boned by CBA with a super consolidation coupled with an uncharacteristic lack of cynicism and investigation on my part. Of course the recommendation was Colonial, a recommendation I paid for - imagine how much a clown I felt when I worked out who owned Colonial, then saw the ongoing âadvice feesâ - of course I wasnât getting any advice. Canned that fairly quickly. Looked to finalise another super account into Colonial and was quoted another multi-thousand advice fee for what I ended up doing myself for an hour or so effort and no cost.
Finances have never been my strong point âŠ
Maybe I should give CBA some useful feedback on this
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Sometimes the best financial advisor is yourself.
Self education, research and spending time and a modest amount of money on buying and reading good advice as delivered by subscription investor newsletters and even âChoiceâ magazines information can arm you with the skills necessary to successfully manage your own financial affairs. Because successfully managing your financial affairs is a as much avoiding the investment dogs with fleas as it is finding the right products for you.
And in doing so this is where buying subscriptions for independent information such as investment newsletters pays dividends, (no-pun intended). My advice is never stop reading and learning, most of us have all worked too hard to have some financial independence, accumulating physical assets, superannuation and the management and protection of these in my opinion is not something you should simply outsource to others.
Some great advice is freely available online for the asking, Warren Buffett the worlds greatest investor publishes an annual letter to his investors which is published for free, with a lot of interesting information and his sage views of the financial world.
A wonderful piece of advice from Warren Buffett that I have taken on board is is donât buy any shares in a company or buy a financial product that you donât understand what it is or how it works.
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ABCâs report on that AMP attendance at the Banking RC, a little more of the back and forth that occurred but as you point out it is just bad for customers. Even worse the Banking RC canât make recommendations in relation to macro-prudential policy, regulation or oversight, so really it just exposes the underbelly but then canât help explain how to fix it.
Iâve picked the coin I will toss for financial advice from now on.
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My educated guess is the RC is working as designed - window dressing to do minimal real damage regardless of the daily headlines along the way. Even though it reveals a grubby sector that almost makes the pollies look good in comparison, it even misses that because of the RCâs carefully constrained scope.
The failings across the financial sector are aided and abetted by a history of âI may wring my hands now and then but do not really care because profits are being hadâ governments; they have been and remain happy for the plebes to worry about themselves.
When government cannot even make a âfatherly preambleâ that financial people should work in the best interests of their customers what else need be said about who their real constituency is?
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