The View | As Australia and the UK show, banker-bashing is all well and good, but directors need to be brought to book
Richard Harris says inquiries in Australia and the UK reveal that bad behaviour by banks is rife, but the solution may be to hold senior management accountable rather than delegating to overzealous compliance departments
Having just been to Australia, I have been following the quaintly named royal commission on the behaviour of banks. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull fought hard against it – a royal commission is much harder to kick. Banking is a naturally adversarial practice and conflicts of interest abound, so it is unsurprising that the commission has uncovered banking practices ranging from the merely unpleasant to borderline criminal. Regardless of the merits, newspaper editors have been in headline heaven with banker bashing.
Banks have behaved badly with allegations before the commission including bribery, forged documents, failure to verify customers’ ability to pay back before lending them money, fraudulent documentation, denying processing or administration errors, price manipulation, breaches of responsible lending obligations and money-laundering laws, mis-selling insurance to people who can’t afford it, lying to regulators and charging fees to dead clients.
