Moment of Truth:
Banking Royal Commission
Interim Report

It’s time for our industry to properly account for its actions here in Australia. Firms haven’t just ‘made mistakes’ or ‘let customers down’ or ‘fallen short of expectations’.

A number have been found to have engaged in unethical practices, to have created conditions and incentives for systematic wrongdoing, to have lost sight of something most other industries and businesses seem to understand implicitly: they are there to serve clients and customers. Regardless of whether all firms engaged in these practices (they did not), it’s make or break time for the industry.

There is an imperative to rethink what sustainable strategies and practices look like, how the industry defines good governance and performance, whether it falls back on legal compliance or holds itself to other higher (business, let alone ethical) standards, competition; in short its playbook, its modus operandi and, yes, its social licence to operate.

Moments of truth, where someone holds a mirror up to ourselves, don’t come along often.

How the industry and its regulators respond in Australia will have repercussions for a long time in this market. We all have an important stake in getting this right. Submissions in response to the Interim Report must be submitted by 5pm on Friday, 26 October 2018.

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