Analysis
Updated
Think about where you work. Where you've worked. The local community group you're involved in.
Your sports team, the one you initially loved but didn't quite gel with so you left.
That is culture.
Culture is hard to define and easy to dismiss but the culture of teams and work shapes our lives.
When
it comes to finance the general impression is that it's like film The
Wolf of Wall Street, where the coin is put first and the customers last.
It's not.
Around
the country there are honest financial planners and bankers banging
their foreheads against their office walls listening to the procession
of sloppy behaviour unveiled by the royal commission.
The examples kept coming.
ANZ knew there had been an explosion in instances of poor advice from their financial planners, breaking the law.
The top issue, in internal documents revealed in hearings, was "failure for advice to be in the best interest of the clients".
AMP was no better. An adviser known as Mr E recommended two customers, a husband and wife, roll over three-non AMP super accounts into an AMP-owned product.
The advice cost them a quarter of their superannuation in a single fee.
AMP knew about the incident last year but the customers still have not received a phone call from the company.
NAB knew their staff were breaking the law by falsely witnessing more than 2,500 customer signatures.
The issue arose when customers were trying to nominate a beneficiary to receive their super funds upon their deaths.
The bank knew this, what turned out to be, common practice could make a customer's estate invalid, but still they did little.
But not nothing. Executives who lost bonuses about it complained directly to the chief executive.
Bad advice could have cost customer $500k
Sam Henderson won the Association of Financial Advisers 'Financial Planning Practice Of The Year' award in 2016.But his advice to a client, high-profile public servant Donna McKenna, was so bad it would have cost her at least $500,000 in superannuation.
One of Mr Henderson's staff was caught on tape impersonating Ms McKenna to the State Authorities Superannuation Scheme. That staffer was not fired.
Ms McKenna complained to the Financial Planning Association (FPA) about the quality of advice she received.
While under investigation, Mr Henderson peppered calls and emails to the investigator, the investigator's boss and the chief executive of the FPA.
Shortly after, the FPA agreed to lower sanctions and to suppress Mr Henderson's name (that was later thrown out by another complaints body).
Then the FPA's head of professionalism wrote to the royal commission urging them not to identify Mr Henderson because it would "cause significant damage to [his] reputation".
After years of scandals about poor financial advice, the regulator ASIC was called to explain its limp response.
We learned that banning a dodgy financial adviser can take two and a half years.
ASIC prefers to make "enforceable undertakings" - negotiated outcomes - to taking on dodgy operators or large institutions.
Lots of what you have heard here comes down to culture.
What colleagues do, what bosses accept.
The most heartening element of sitting through the royal commission is that at almost every turn bad deeds have been picked up by junior members of staff.
They raised the issue with their bosses, often noting that the institution's behaviour meant they were breaking the law.
That those bosses did nothing or did not display the urgency customers would demand, that's the culture the royal commission will likely have a lot to say about when its draft report comes out in September.
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