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TEHRAN, Feb 04 -A special government-appointed inquiry excoriated Australia’s financial sector for misconduct on Monday, referring two dozen cases to regulators for possible legal action but leaving the structure of the country’s powerful banks in place.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -Regulators will be subjected to a new oversight body and the financial industry’s pay will be overhauled to remove conflicts of interest, according to the recommendations of the so-called Royal Commission. But the recommendations stopped short of measures that would threaten the A$400 billion ($289 billion) industry’s dominant position.
The recommendations come after the public inquiry heard 11 months of shocking revelations of the financial industry’s wrongdoing, including that fees were charged to the accounts of dead people and that cash bribes were paid over the counter to win mortgage business, wiping A$60 billion from the country’s top finance stocks.
The conservative government, which was initially opposed to the setting up of the inquiry, promised it would act on all the 76 recommendations.
While the changes are likely to make the financial sector more liable to be punished for violations, banks in the world’s fourteenth-biggest economy have been spared any enforced breakup or interference in the way they choose to lend money. The inquiry said it would be costly and disruptive to separate banks providing products and advice.
“I don’t know that it was a missed opportunity but a lot of people were thinking that he would force structural separation,” said Pamela Hanrahan, a professor of commercial law at University of New South Wales, who advised the inquiry, referring to its Commissioner Kenneth Hayne.
“There are parts of the community that might have expected the commissioner to go in a bit harder ... but he has left a very clear pathway for whomever is in government and for the industry to think about what they need to change.”
The inquiry recommended sweeping changes to the business and pay models of mortgage and insurance broking, financial advice and pension fund management.
Source:Reuters
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