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In its latest round of hearings, the royal commission set up late last year to look into misconduct in the banking, superannuation, and financial services industry has found widespread misconduct in banking – from collecting fees for financial advice not provided and deceiving corporate regulator ASIC to charging dead customers.
"This type of behavior can attract penalties which include jail time," Treasurer Scott Morrison said last week as a royal commission, after the public inquiry heard of malfeasance at financial services company AMP. “That is how serious things are.”
The royal commission has heard AMP has been charging clients for services it did not provide, repeatedly interfered with outside investigation, and lied to ASIC about its practices, Nikkei Asian Review reported.
To take responsibility, AMP CEO Craig Meller resigned last Friday, though he denied that he was personally involved in the fraudulent activities. Meller's name was found to have been scrubbed from investigation records.
The royal commission also heard that employees at an arm of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) charge a dead client for financial advice for more than a decade; while a Westpac Banking employee quoted a married couple a business loan that was 10 times what they could actually borrow, and collected advising fees while convincing the couple to sell their house and take up insurance policies.
Morrison has called for investigations to proceed quickly to prevent the scandals from damaging Australia's reputation as a financially developed country, Nikkei Asian Review reported.
