Royal Commission into the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry

The Choice submission as I have referred to in a post above certainly allows?/allowed for victim statements to be presented to the Commission. Perhaps Choice can advise us if it is still possible for submissions to be made through them. If it is then maybe a bit of a social media and advertising blast could be arranged to get more people involved so they are heard via Choice.

The terms of the Commission are quite restrictive as is the allowed timeframe. What they are allowed to make recommendations on has been curtailed by the Terms of Reference (ToR). You would have to get the ToR amended and the timeframe lengthened to accomplish this and do you see the Govt doing this?

This is partly why some of the Testimony available won’t be heard now or even perhaps ever. This is why your quote[quote=“meltam, post:58, topic:14825”]
Commission didn’t have time to hear all the grievances in relation to the banking industry.
[/quote] is really a sad reflection of the result, I believe, of our current Government’s aim since they were “forced” into this Commission.

If that had been the path or attitude that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had taken into their investigations and hearings I doubt we would have had the good result we have with it. When something is so seriously wrong every avenue should be followed to get the best result, it may mean more time and effort is involved but I would rather a complete review than one that doesn’t meet the needs.

I am sure the people who look at the submissions are able to put aside those that are obviously frivolous or without merit. In fact they are there to filter out the “chaff from the grain”, that is just like anyone who works with the public eg Police who deal with “my cat went missing” to traumatic crime scenes. Yes, I feel for them but that doesn’t lessen my desire for them to do a thorough job and investigate as deeply as needed.

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This Royal Commission was quite different. All the responsibikity foowed one direction
from the abuser to the individual being abused.

The context of the banking Royal Commission is quite different, unless as a whole it is assumed and accepted at any financial risk is the responsibility of the banks and none lies with individuals which have approached the banks.

Yes, in some circumstances the banks have not excerised a duty of care and customer decisions have heen made in the bank’s favour, but there are many examples of individuals who have taken on risk, accepted it, it didn’t work out, so blame the banks for the predicament they are in. There have been a few jn the mass media which appear to be poor decision making of the bank customer or due to unfortunate circumstances (such as the business they own not performing or one losing their income and can’t service their financial commitments or under insuring themselves or taking on risky products without reading PDS etc). When a customer accept risk, like a farmer borrowing heavily to plant a crop and hope the rains come, it is not the financial institution which should take on this risk fully.

Responsibilities and risk of the customer needs to also be considered in the banking Royal Commission, unlike the child abuse one.

Agree fully. I expect that there will be many submissions whereby the customer may seen to be ultimately responsible and the banks followed usual business practices and dealing with that particular customer. Unfortunately the customer may not believe this has been the case and may use the Royal Commission to raise their own gripes and problems.

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However there are many reports the banks did not use due or basic diligence to vet applications and granted loans/credit regardless. It was all about selling money and quotas.

In the context of being heard I agree with you. In the context of suggesting that is not germane to the RC, those unfortunates who got in over their heads and blame the banks may have a cause - they were sold the goods and took them. It is reasonable for an applicant for credit to assume if it is granted it must be OK.

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The RC into abuse would have had claims made by some that evidence did not support, eg someone piggy backing onto someone’s legitimate claims. But if the RC had not looked as deeply because of some perceived lack of honesty the results would have been different. They, I am sure, rejected some claims as baseless and no further investigation was taken or warranted.

If you look at the amounts the Financial Institutions even before the RC was announced, have had to pay out to aggrieved customers, and the culture of inappropriate financial behaviour by staff in those financial institutions, then those claims will and have included customers with unfounded grievances putting claims forward.

However these do not likely get past the sifting of claims and on further investigation are probably and most likely rejected. The same will happen in the RC for people placing their grievances on record. I would rather the 1s or the 10s getting past the initial barriers with somewhat baseless accusations than the 100s or 1,000s with real claims not being heard, by this I mean the ratio not the actual numbers. The baseless claims will be quickly cut out

Also Financial Institutions have a duty of care to provide honest appraisal of a person’s capacity to pay, and in the circumstances of someone investing to take responsible care of that investment. This from both a historic basis and the current revelations, has not occurred to the tune of billions of dollars. Perhaps, and I think likely the situation is far worse than many anticipate.

Some Financial Institutions have also created clutter and delay at the RC by providing poor responses, un-needed and patently wasteful amounts of paper that has no real relevence to the Inquiry. Is this a tactic to bog the RC down so that it’s time is wasted and real claims are unable to be fully or even partially reviewed in the timeframe allocated. I am more suspicious and wary of this behaviour.

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In answer to the question above, please keep using the CHOICE submission tool to have your voice heard. We have so far received thousands of cases, and we’re committed to doing all we can to make sure the consumer voice is represented.

Thanks also to all those who have submitted cases so far.

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Thank you @BrendanMays for clarifying that. In the hope that it was still active I again tweeted about the survey today and saw that @ErinTurner did respond to the tweet.

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ANZ halts sales of car loans.

More info:
https://www.choice.com.au/money/banking/everyday-banking/articles/anz-halts-car-loans-royal-commission-hearings-160318

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Amazing how it suddenly happens just before the appearance, I imagine so they can go in and say “yes we failed but look we have already seen the problem and have taken the required action to fix it
aren’t we good”

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Charlie Munger is the sidekick, erstwhile friend and confidant of the world’s most successful investor Warren Buffett famously once said:
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
— Charlie Munger

Just like the sub prime loan crisis in america that kicked off the GFC;
if you pervert the incentives you will pervert the outcome.

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“[It] represents less than one percent of revenue within our broader Australian business, so we need to assess if it is better for our customers, shareholders and employees if we focus our investment on areas of our business that are core to what we do,” says Catriona Noble, managing director of ANZ’s retail distribution.

So, 1% of 40 billion dollars (2017 revenue)
 I don’t think it’s as minor as ANZ are making out.

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Now the story of the Credit Insurance and how it was sold unethically to some.

https://www.yourlifechoices.com.au/finance/banking-and-investment/what-cba-hid-from-pensioners

and more news out of the Commission

Sadly mostly these stories reflect how APRA and ASIC need stronger regulatory powers and changes to their processes to rein these “Cowboy” organisations into line but, Oh Wait, The Royal Commission can’t make recommendations on that as the Government specifically didn’t allow that
Begs a question of why didn’t they or maybe it doesn’t as the answer might be so obvious.

Every day has been a litany of failure, unethical conduct, dodgy practices, basically unmitigated disaster and the trouble is we are required to have our pay, benefits etc passed through their hands. Some might say we use a Credit Union or similar but in the end it is still ending up in a financial institution, some of which are starting to stink worse than a dead possum in a wall cavity on a hot summer’s day.

No sooner had I written it, of how ASIC is almost powerless to get changes in the Banking sector, than the following article reporting on ANZ’s appearance and ANZ’s failure to produce evidence that highlights this inadequacy is “printed”. Yep you sure can have faith in the Banking Industry professionalism it seems.

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Another day another failing but it’s all ok as they are going to pay customers back
?

https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/03/21/anz-royal-commission-home-loans-2/

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You missed giving credit to the inevitable empty apology. Costs nothing, does nothing, but is the corporate flavour of the times.

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/Humour
I did? Sorry that I missed doing that and I promise never ever to do it ever again until I make a similar mistake that has no relationship to this one unless I have an exemption from not making the same mistake again as long as I promise never to make it again
I promise
/end of Humour (even if it was pretty poor)

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You could steal Zuckerberg’s line:
“I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it”

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 the five standard excuses 
 sadly very accurate 


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Are you trying to tell us that industry self-regulation as lauded by the LNP isn’t up to the mark?

APRA & ASIC need to grow some, some, some, 
 something that will actually get them performing in the interests of the people they are meant to protect. Oh wait, that applies to the ACCC as well!

This all just proves that consumers haven’t and aren’t being well served or protected in situations where there is a complete imbalance of power.

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If this is not appalling behaviour I would not know what is.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/superannuation/2018/03/26/mercer-superannuation-fund-kept-customers-in-dark-low-fees/

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A little older (December 2017) but still relevant:

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Thanks - I’ve passed it on to some interested parties I know. I reckon their switchboard might be lighting up with renewed interest in their products :wink: And yes, it is appalling behaviour, but not in the least surprising - except that maintaining two obvious pricing structures for no good reason seems rather obvious they’d get caught 


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